Typically, when a B-to-B company wants to promote a new product, it goes through an agency that specializes in its industry. That’s what Volvo Trucks did previously, working with various agencies through different types of traditional media including print advertising, PR, and direct mail. But as it prepared to unleash its all-new line of heavy-duty trucks, the Swedish trucking firm realized that the media landscape had fundamentally changed since its last major launch. And the new media world called for a different approach to broadcasting the brand’s message—something unique that would outsmart competitors.

Rather than go through a B-to-B agency with experience in commercial trucks, Volvo Trucks enlisted Forsman & Bodenfors—one of Sweden’s leading creative agencies with a history of groundbreaking consumer campaigns for the likes of IKEA, UNICEF, and Volvo Cars. As Forsman & Bodenfors developed the campaign, its research revealed two important insights about commercial trucks. First, long-haul truckers love their trucks, forming an emotional connection with them that resembles the relationship between regular drivers and their daily rides. Second, a large volume of influencers have an impact on truck-buying decisions—a set that includes friends, family members, colleagues, bosses, and even the clients and businesses whose products the trucks carry.

Armed with these insights, the team set out to create an integrated campaign that would amaze experienced truckers by showcasing the new trucks’ features while simultaneously captivating the general public with breathtaking demonstrations. Traditional television advertising was out of reach budgetwise. It was also not a good fit for the kinds of messages the campaign needed to communicate or the types of buzz the agency hoped to create. So Forsman & Bodenfors turned to social media. The result was a campaign dubbed “Live Tests,” a fully integrated promotional effort rooted in a series of documentary-style films designed to have impact on a Hollywood scale.

The first film to go up on Volvo Trucks’ YouTube channel was “The Ballerina,” a three-minute “making of”–style video in which world record–holding highliner Faith Dickey walked a wire between two speeding Volvo trucks, completing the run just in time to duck as the trucks entered two opposing sides of a tunnel, violently snapping the tight wire. The video was designed to demonstrate the tremendous steering precision of the new Volvo trucks. Although the “Live Tests” campaign eventually panned out into a multi-feature, long-running campaign, it was only after “The Ballerina” was posted that the campaign’s strategy began to take shape. “When you create for YouTube, you can’t plan too much in advance because you really don’t know how… popular an idea or piece of film will be,” recounts Bjorn Engström, senior partner with the ad agency.

After that first successful effort, Volvo Trucks and the agency created a set of five more films. In “The Technician,” a Volvo semi roars over the head of an engineer buried up to his neck in sand, demonstrating the truck’s 12-inch ground clearance. “The Hook” provides a dramatic testimonial of the strength of Volvo truck tow hooks, given by Volvo Trucks president Claes Nilsson as he stands perched atop a Volvo truck with trailer suspended high above a harbor. “Hamster” demonstrates “ease of steering,” with a tiny hamster named Charlie steering a huge mining dump truck by running on an exercise wheel attached to the truck’s steering wheel. And in an interactive 360-degree experience illustrating maneuverability, “The Chase” provides the point of view of a Volvo truck as it runs from bulls through the tight streets of a Spanish town.

The timed release of each of these videos was accompanied by various supporting promotional efforts designed to extend the campaign’s message and drive traffic to YouTube. Volvo Truck sponsored print ads in the trucking press as well as interviews with Volvo engineers, released in both print and video. The videos had another purpose—to increase the social media fan base for Volvo Trucks, building toward the campaign’s grand finale. In little more than a year and on the eve of the debut of the campaign’s dramatic video climax, the number of Volvo Trucks YouTube subscribers had increased 2,300 percent to 85,000 while the Volvo Trucks Facebook page experienced a 1,700 percent increase in fans to 290,000.

But it was the final installment in the first round of the “Live Tests” campaign that hit the ball out of the park. In “Epic Split,” martial arts superstar Jean-Claude Van Damme stood with one foot on the mirrors of two side-by-side shiny new gold Volvo trucks as they moved progressively farther apart in reverse, stabilizing their distance at the point where the Muscles from Brussels is poised in full and perfect splits. The dramatic video highlighted Volvo Dynamic Steering—an electronically controlled mechanism that adjusts 2,000 times per second for unsurpassed precision. Within a month, the video had drawn 60 million YouTube hits, going on to become the most viral non–Super Bowl automotive ad of all time. Also by the end of the month, Volvo Trucks delivered 31 percent more trucks to dealers than it had for the same month the previous year.

Although each piece of the “Live Tests” campaign was laudable in itself, the sum of the parts produced a result more impressive than any of the stunts performed in the campaign videos. According to Forsman & Bodenfors, the campaign produced more than 100 million video views, 8 million social media shares, and more than 20,000 editorial features. It also produced thousands of video spoofs good for another 50 million views, including “Greetings from Chuck,” a video for the holidays featuring a CGI Chuck Norris performing splits on the wings of two Lockheed C-5s while a lit-up, tree-shaped pyramid of military paratroopers stood on his head. In all, the media impact of the campaign was valued at more than $170 million. The campaign received so many awards—including the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix at Cannes—that Advertising Age dubbed Volvo Trucks the “Most Awarded Advertiser of the Year.”

The campaign also produced measurable behaviors among target customers. In a survey of 2,200 commercial truck owners, half of those who saw the videos indicated they were more likely to choose Volvo for their next purchase, while a third of respondents had either contacted a dealer or visited a Volvo Trucks website. “If we talk to our salespeople in our 140 markets all over the world,” said Anders Vilhelmsson, PR director for Volvo Trucks, “they tell us very often one of the first things prospective customers bring up in conversation is the viral film.”

With all this success achieved on a shoestring budget, it’s no surprise that Volvo Trucks extended the “Live Tests” campaign. Following the same model set by the first six videos, the team produced some unlikely pieces, including a race between a Volvo tractor and a supercar as well as a hidden-camera exposé showing the reaction of a valet as a Volvo truck pulls up in front of a black-tie casino. But the most recent video became one of the most successful entries of the campaign to date. “Look Who’s Driving” puts a darling British four-year-old behind the remote controls of the Volvo FMX—a dump truck that the ad proclaims is “the toughest truck we ever built.”

Rather than just a clever series of stunts for the sake of stunts, “Live Tests” pulled off a monumental task. By selecting features with high relevance to both its new models and the target audience, Volvo communicated those features through stories that captivated viewers everywhere. The campaign achieved the goal of successfully launching five new trucks, with phase two ultimately producing a social media fan base double the size of the one Volvo Trucks had achieved following the first phase of the campaign. The campaign has also helped Volvo Trucks to achieve record sales and market share worldwide. Even more amazing, Volvo Trucks did all that on a shoestring budget. In the world of integrated marketing communications, “Live Tests” is truly an epic.