Remember that Volvo ad featuring Jean Claude Van Damme doing the splits on two moving semi-trucks? Turns out the unbeatable combination of Enya and JCVD made Volvo rich(er). While costing between three and four million dollars to make, the ad generated over 170 million dollars in estimated revenue. This is not to mention the additional play the commercial got when it went viral (it now has just under 70 million views on YouTube.) The Local, a Swedish news outlet, reported Volvo’s head of media relations as saying:
“If we look at the total effect, our media value is clearly bigger than the 1.1 billion kronor we pulled in,” Per Nilsson, head of media relations for Volvo Trucks, told the Dagens Industri newspaper. “We haven’t counted the copies on YouTube, for example.”
He’s referring to the many, many, many, many parodies that can be found online, which all equal free advertising for Volvo. Who knew that Jean Claude Van Damme would be so good at selling reliable Swedish cars? Check out the original commercial again below:
