The Volvo Trucks symbol – the Iron Mark – is a well-known and respected global trademark. And there is no doubt about the fact that Volvo Trucks is one of the leading truck manufacturers in the world.
However, most people have no clue about where Volvo Trucks comes from or that they are kingpins within the trucker fashion industry.
In fact, Volvo Trucks has equipped drivers, retailers and fans all over the world with first-class clothing, driver gear and brand building merchandise since the dawn of trucking.
With their new collection Volvo Trucks wanted not only to celebrate their Swedish Heritage but also set a new sales record for their Driver Gear. And do so without any media budget. Whatsoever. A daunting task indeed. Especially since we did not have a new truck launch to pin our communication on. No free rides.
Since the name of the collection, Heritage, were meant to celebrate the tradition and Swedish legacy of Volvo Trucks we thought that it would be fitting to launch it around June 6th – the Swedish National Day. But since our sense of patriotism and national pride is a pretty modest affair – especially compared to the US and our more festive neighbor Norway – we figured our celebration needed a boost. So we decided to expand our national day to last an entire week. A week where each day was given a very Swedish phenomenon or trait that has helped shaped Volvo Trucks to the global corporate giant it is today.
In order to boost viral value we contacted another successful Swedish export, actor Peter Stormare.
His mission was to illustrate our seven Swedish phenomena in seven short films.
We then published our movies right at the core of our target audience – Volvo Trucks massive Facebook channel that boasts over 400 000 die hard trucker fans (thank you Jean Claude)
Of course, all of our postings in social media guided our audience to the Volvo Trucks webshop where they could go to town on Volvo Merch and experience, celebrate and enjoy a truly Swedish week of their own with the help of instructional films, broschures, recepies and yada, yada, yada.
So how did it go?
The campaign was a success – not least among retailers that put together their own Swedish weeks. In one week hundreds of thousands of Volvo fans all over the world had seen our moves and given them a 98% favorable rating. All of witch in turn led to that the Volvo Trucks Heritage Collection became the fastest selling merchandise collection in the history of Volvo Trucks.
Peter Stormare prepares for Swedish Week.
Osvensk according to Peter Stormare.
Föräldraledig according to Peter Stormare.
