Screencasts

A screencast is a recording of your computer screen’s output, where activity is occurring on screen to demonstrate your topic, often with an accompanying voice-over. For example, you can record your screen showing someone how to perform a complicated task in a spreadsheet application or use an illustration or doodling tool to draw shapes to demonstrate how to draw a cartoon character. (See Figure 8-2 for an example of a screencast showing how to use Adobe Photoshop.) A screencast approach can show a potential customer how easy your tool is to use or walk existing customers through a process.

Screencasts are a great educational tool. To create screencasts, all you need is some screen-recording software and a microphone. The one built into your computer should be sufficient.

Talking head videos

Check your teeth for spinach, turn on a good bright light, make sure the dog is in another room, sit down, turn on your webcam, and hit record— one of the easiest educational videos you can make is a talking head video, where you simply speak to the camera on a topic. See Figure 8-3 for an example from Warby Parker who make extensive use of this approach to provide customer service.

To create a talking head video, make sure that you speak clearly and confidently and stay on topic. Make a plan for the key points you need to hit and in which order.

Marketers may use talking head videos to provide customer service, such as giving an overview of an online course you offer.

Listicles

Listicle videos often take a talking-head style (see preceding section) but break the content into a set of numbered points, such as “9 Things You Didn’t Know About Rhinos” or “Five Steps to Healthier Eating.”

Listicles are a great format because they are an entertaining way to bring snackable — that is, easy to consume —., educational content. For example, if you’re a marketer who is promoting a special kind of cleaning product that has many uses, you may make a listicle video that counts down the top ways to use the product — for example, “101 Ways to Use PowerBriteOut to Clean Your Home This Spring”.

The YouTuber Matt Santoro (http://bit.ly/mattsantoro) makes awesome listicle style videos that educate people on a vast array of topics. His video “10 CREEPY URBAN LEGENDS that turned out to be TRUE!” has more than 12.5 million views. See Figure 8-4 for examples of Matt’s videos.

Presentations

If you’re giving a presentation, take the opportunity to capture it on camera in the form of a presentation video. Perhaps you’re presenting at a conference or at a local school on a topic on which you’re an expert, where you’re standing in front of an audience either speaking or speaking in concert with a slideshow presented on a screen. See Figure 8-5 for an example from TEDTalks.

If you’re presenting at a venue like a school or conference center, you’ll need to work with the organizers to ensure that you capture the relevant permissions. Permission is required for both the venue and any people who may be in the video. Always ask your host first whether you’re able to video the presentation. Often conferences and events are already filming the content and may be able to make the video available to you for your use.

To maximize the quality of the video recording, make sure that you set up your camera so that it’s focused on where you’ll be standing, the presentation screen is visible, and the audio can be captured. Also, do a test run to ensure that your camera can pick up the visuals and sound.

If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) marketer, consider making presentation videos designed to train customers on your product or service.

Lecture and classroom recordings

Lecture and classroom recordings are perfect for teachers of all classes. In this type of video, you record the lecture or class discussion so that students can view the class content at a later date.

Unlike screencasts and talking head videos, which tend to be made with YouTube specifically in mind, lecture and classroom recordings simply capture the action.

Red Bull, the energy drink, has a YouTube channel for their Red Bull Music Academy program (www.youtube.com/user/redbullmusicacademy/videos) that features lectures and talks from artists, performers, academics, and more (see Figure 8-6). Red Bull’s program is designed to foster creativity in music because music is a core part of the Red Bull brand. While the music academy is very much educational content, it helps Red Bull deliver its brand marketing goals.

You can discover more about brand marketing campaigns on YouTube in Chapter 2.

Interviews

One person interviewing another on a topic can be a great format for an educational video and tends to be entertaining. An interview video is a chance for the viewer to sit back and enjoy what the interviewee has to say. Ted, the nonprofit known for its Ted Talk conferences, uses the interview format for some of its content.

Interview-style videos are very popular and have spawned their own subgenres and even parodies. People in Silicon Valley love to call interviews fireside chats to express the idea of a casual and informal conversation between two friends, sitting by a fire (usually just a video of a fire on a tablet or screen) asking and answering questions — just in front of several hundred people!

You may be familiar with the Zach Galifianakis and the Funny or Die parody series “Between Two Ferns.” In this series, Zach interviews a celebrity in a typically awkward or unprepared style, while both sit between two large ferns against a black backdrop. Zach has taken the classic features of interview-style TV shows and turned the format into a vehicle for his YouTube comedy videos. See Figure 8-7 for Zach’s interview with Hillary Clinton.

This approach works well when you have an expert to interview about your product or service. For example, say that you’re marketing your latest water filtration product, which you’ve been testing in developing countries. A potential expert to interview may be one of the on-the-ground researchers who can talk about how the product was used and how it worked in the field.

Demonstrations

If you have a product or a process, a step-by-step demonstration is a great video to make. This type of video provides the audience with a visual demonstration of the steps they need to take. For example, you can demonstrate how to dissect a frog by placing your camera directly above your lab work space and slowly walking the viewer through the process, narrating as you go.

Demonstrations may work if you’re a marketer explaining how to repair the lawn mower you manufacture and sell or how to set up your new outdoor tent product available through local big box stores.

Illustrated explainer videos

A massively popular format is the illustrated explainer video, which is best, ahem, illustrated by the RSA Animate series (www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg), originally conceived and executed by Andrew Park. Andrew, an illustrator based in the UK, created a cartoon series for the Royal Society of Art’s YouTube channel that took content from RSA speeches (where academics and luminaries gave lectures), and turned them into illustrated, hand-drawn cartoon images to match the audio of the lecture.

Illustrated explainer videos became a popular format, with one RSA video, “RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us,” garnering more than 16 million views since it was posted in 2010. The video, shown in Figure 8-8, sets cartoon imagery to author Dan Pink’s talk on human motivation. Later, Bill Gates chose Andrew Park to illustrate his Gates Foundation lecture on the power of vaccines.

While explainer videos are incredible videos to deliver a compelling visual explanation of a topic, they require skill and time. You must either be or have access to an animator and also have the patience to make the right choices of what visual to draw to best communicate the point.

Marketers can use these videos to explain how a service works — for example, if you’re a member of the marketing team of a bank, you may make an explainer video that walks people through how a special mortgage product works over the span of its decades-long life.

Tutorials

Quite possibly the most popular format of all on YouTube, tutorials are similar to a talking head video because you’re filming yourself head on, but you’re providing a step-by-step tutorial for a specific task. Tutorials were originally filmed using the built-in webcam in people’s laptops, which inadvertently set the style for many tutorial videos with the camera facing slightly down on the subject.

Tutorials can cover a massive array of topics, from makeup to cooking and DIY projects to giraffe doodles. Tutorials are incredibly popular, with YouTubers creating a steady stream of content explaining how to achieve a certain look or redecorate your bedroom with a new theme.

Marketers can take advantage of this format by creating tutorial videos on how your audience can use your product or by partnering with YouTubers who demonstrate how they use your product. For example, a lot of beauty bloggers and brands like Mac Cosmetics and Sephora have been able to tap into everyone from amateur YouTubers to professional makeup artists to create video content that shows how to use their products. See Figure 8-9 for an example from Shalom Blac, a popular hair and makeup vlogger who creates tutorials. Shalom has more than 70 million video views and 1.1 million subscribers.

Who is the audience for your educational video?

Think about who you are targeting with your video. Perhaps you will target the novice, with no previous knowledge on the topic, and so you’ll make no assumptions and explain every concept as you go. Perhaps you are targeting experts, so you’ll consider what they may already know. Maybe you’re making a video for an English-speaking country, but people in other countries and languages would love to watch your video. (YouTube offers translation tools!)

Which format will your audience learn best from?

Review the different types of educational videos described earlier in this chapter and think about which format suits the audience the best. Different audiences have different learning styles. In addition, some videos, like talking heads, are easier to make than, say, illustrated explainer videos.

Further, some styles, such as a screencast, work better when scripted. Others, like a lecture, work better when informally planned. Still others, such as an interview, work best when they’re delivered without too much structure, where you’ve planned a handful of questions but don’t yet know which ones you’ll ask in the moment.

The safest approach to ensure a great result is to script your video.

What content is your competition?

Search YouTube to see what content may already exist on the topic you’d like to make a video about. If you’re going to make videos on learning a language, quite a few videos are already out there, so think about how you can make your video different and unique.

If you’re a marketer who is the exclusive creator of a widget, then possibly no videos are already out there about the widget, which makes your job a little easier. However, someone may have bought your widget and made a how-to video explaining how to use it. Perhaps you can curate, or collect, the best of these videos in a playlist on your channel, without the need to make the videos yourself.

You can discover more about curation of other people’s videos in Chapter 12.

Is your credibility evident?

You know you’ve got the credentials to speak on a topic, but viewers discovering your video for the first time may not know that you’re an expert. Providing some context as to who you are will help build confidence that viewers have arrived at the right place.

Tell your audience if you have a master’s degree in widgets and, just like any good teacher and academic, be sure to cite your sources. Just as an endless amount of great educational content is available on YouTube and the Internet, a lot of disinformation is out there, too. If you’re a credible educator and you cite your sources, then people will be able to trust that your information is true and accurate.

Do you have a brand?

If you’re going to make several educational videos, you may want to create a simple consistent brand look that includes your title, description, style of video, and any logo or artwork you use.

Think about the big online educational channels, like Ted (www.ted.com and www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector) Their style is immediately recognizable, and each video starts with an intro featuring their brand logo, tagline, and music. Don’t make your intro more than a few seconds because people have short attention spans and want to get right to the content.

News and celebrity entertainment shows

You’ll be able to find on YouTube most major news establishments, such as ABC, Fox, BBC, CBC, and CNN, as well as TV celebrity entertainment channels like E! News. These entertainment shows often feature news that’s happening right now, as well as clips and content from the past.

CNN’s channel features up-to-date content from the day, along with playlists, such as “Best of Van Jones,” “Best of Chris Cuomo,” and “Best of Jake Tapper” (see Figure 8-12). YouTube even has its own news channel, which it describes as a “destination featuring comprehensive up-to-date coverage on the latest top stories, sports, business, entertainment, politics, and more.”

Most marketers won’t create news-style content, relying instead on their product or service being newsworthy and mentioned by other news creators. However, you may choose to parody the news format or perhaps create your own series of videos providing news-style updates that relate just to you. For example if you’re a not-for-profit, as part of your marketing efforts, you can create news-style videos that communicate the work you’re doing in various communities.

News content isn’t limited to the big news brands, however, as many YouTubers are creating videos in their own news-type format. YouTuber Philip DeFranco delivers news and pop culture videos five days a week (see Figure 8-13).

Fictional shows and web series

People all over the world are creating video web series, which are just like a TV show but without the need of a greenlight from the studio boss. The sky is the limit with creating shows.

For example, comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez created a show for YouTube entitled “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo,” which had five episodes of around 20 minutes length each (see Figure 8-14). The show, named IndieWire’s best web series of 2016, in part helped Alvarez land representation with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) a major talent agency in Hollywood.

A typical marketing approach for fictional shows and web series is to provide product integration. For example, say you’re marketing a new kind of bicycle your company has manufactured, and so you reach out to a YouTuber creating a fictional web series and agree to feature your bicycle in the show. You provide the product, and the YouTuber writes a story line into the show that features the bike.

Short films, full-length movies, and documentaries

People are creating and uploading their short and full-length movies and documentaries. Plus you’re able to rent mainstream movies through YouTube directly.

YouTuber Shane Dawson experiments with the documentary approach, creating long-form videos detailing the lives of other YouTubers, such as Jeffree Star. In September 2018, Dawson published a multipart documentary about the YouTuber Jake Paul.

If you’re an actor, writer, or producer, making content and publishing on YouTube is a great way to market yourself and springboard into bigger projects in other channels.

Video game walk-throughs

Video gaming is a massive category on YouTube. If you’re not a gamer, search for video game walk-throughs, and you’ll come across something that may seem quite strange: People video themselves playing video games (see Figure 8-15), and millions of people watch these videos.

Gaming is so big, YouTube created a gaming specific destination for it at https://gaming.youtube.com.

This format obviously presents an opportunity for marketers who are in the gaming space. Reaching out to YouTubers to play your game is an amazing way to get an audience to see the new game you’ve released. For marketers not in the gaming industry, companies that make merchandise can tie in related products to big game titles.

Unboxing, review, spree, and haul videos

Millions of YouTubers are creating videos daily that show them reviewing a product that they bought or that a marketer sent to them to review.

Unboxing videos are massively popular (see Figure 8-16). In an unboxing video, you provide a clear demonstration of a new still-in-the-box product that you’re slowly and methodically removing from its packaging, pulling out and discussing each item in detail. Unboxing videos are sort of a product-porn approach to exciting new products like the latest gadgets and toys. You may not even talk much about the product, how it works, or what it’s like, as unboxing videos are more about the experience of opening the box for the first time than anything else.

In review videos, you might skip the unboxing and instead provide your detailed review of the features of the product. You’ll walk people through a product’s functions, showing how it works and providing commentary on what you think of it.

YouTubers also create a spree or haul video where a person makes a video showing the items they just purchased. In a spree or haul video, you walk through each item, where you bought it, the price, why you bought it, and so on.

Some of these videos can snag tens of millions of views and are often a great way for marketers to take advantage of showcasing their product.

If you’re a marketer who sends a product to a YouTuber to feature in a video, that YouTuber must disclose that she was sent this product for free by the manufacturer. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enacted laws to regulate paid endorsements, requiring all content creators who accept free goods and services to ensure that they fully disclose that the items were either received for free or as part of a paid promotion.

Vlogs

Vlogs are a whole group of entertainment videos that are very much about the person simply talking about their life, their adventures, family, stories, and more. The video equivalent of writing a blog post, vlogs can be short diary entry bursts of a few minutes or longer videos of 20 minutes or more showing the events in a person’s life. Vlogs tend to be popular with top YouTubers who have fan bases who love to follow along with their lives (see Figure 8-17).

A specific kind of vlog is the drive-with-me video, where you place a camera on your dashboard, go pick up a friend, and record yourselves talking while driving them somewhere. A drive-with-me video is sort of a twist on the interview approach and is popular in large part due to the success of shows like “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” from Jerry Seinfeld and “Carpool Karaoke” from James Corden.

Ask-me-anything video are one subtype of vlogs. In this subtype, fans can ask any questions they like. Other video subtypes can show YouTubers listing their favorite things or their daily routine or reacting to things like watching a performance or trying something new.

Marketers may find opportunity in these formats by inviting YouTubers with large audiences to visit their showroom or retail store or having them talk about how they use a product or service throughout their day. For example, if you’re a car dealer, you can create a drive-with-me video. Just as with product reviews and haul videos, any promotion must be declared by the content creator.

Comedy, sketch, and parodies

Whether it’s a popular YouTuber or your kids filming themselves in the basement, comedy, sketch, and parody videos are big on YouTube. In a comedy video, you may simply be telling jokes stand-up style. In a sketch, you may have created a whole sketch show with some friends. In a parody video, you may parody a video that’s popular in culture by remaking it. Comedy is a popular category.

Marketers may have to get creative as to how they leverage these kinds of videos. Perhaps you’re a bar owner, and you decide to have an open mic. Posting the comedy routines (with permission, of course) may be a great way to promote your weekly night and general attendance at your bar.

Some years ago, an advertising agency in Canada made a parody video, shown in Figure 8-18, to promote its services by relaunching itself as a “Catvertising Agency.” The video garnered 2.5 million views. You can see the video at http://bit.ly/catvertisingexample.

Pranks and challenges

In life, I’m not a fan of pranks, but the popularity of people pulling pranks on their friends, and even strangers, is undeniable. In prank videos, hidden cameras capture the creator setting up unwilling victims in any number of prank scenarios, such as walking into a room only to be slapped and sprayed with whipped cream.

Perhaps some marketers can take advantage of the prank format – for example, if you’re a toy manufacturer where your product lends itself to kids playing harmless pranks on each other, you can create a series of videos of gentle pranks that kids could copy and play on their friends.

Content that endangers people, especially minors, is prohibited per YouTube’s content policy. Familiarize yourself with the policies by visiting www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies.

I’ve venture to say that challenge videos are a smarter option for marketers to consider. In a challenge video, people attempt a seemingly impossible challenge, with the resulting video showing just how amazingly capable humans can be when they set their mind to it.

Dude Perfect is a YouTube channel with more than 33 million subscribers, and its most popular video at the time of writing is “Ping Pong Trick Shots 3” (see Figure 8-19) with more than 155 million views. What’s amazing is that the video is a partnership with Oreo, opening with a truly epic Rube Goldberg machine that incorporates Oreos and milk, with a subtle but clear message “Sponsored advertising by Oreo Dunk Challenge”.

Challenge videos are a popular format, and this Oreo example is a great way to show how a marketer can take advantage of this approach. Partnering with a big YouTube channel like Dude Perfect may not be in the budget of all marketers, but I imagine the folk at Oreo were very happy with their investment and the marketing return of having such a massive volume of video views of a piece of content with great product integration.

Each year, new challenge trends emerge. For example, in 2018, a popular challenge was the “What the Fluff?” challenge. Thousands and thousands of people made videos where they hid behind a sheet in front of their dogs, quickly hiding as they dropped the sheet. Their dogs became confused and concerned by this magic trick and began searching for their owners. If people didn’t have a dog, but they did have a cat, they tried the challenge on them — and quickly discovered that cats don’t care where you go!

Music, dance, lip synch, and more

Of course, you’ll find music videos on YouTube — just take a look at what’s trending, and you’ll mostly likely see the latest release from the hottest artist. You’ll also find people creating their own music, music videos, and even lip synch videos thanks to platforms like TikTok (www.tiktok.com).

Typically, marketers have worked with big artists to include product integration in their videos or to sponsor the artist’s wardrobe or tour.

Smaller marketers who aren’t familiar with the world of music, especially rights management and clearances, would be wise to avoid using music that they haven’t secured the rights to. YouTube runs a tight ship when it comes to copyright.

See Chapter 15 on music, copyright and Content ID, YouTube’s system to help content creators manage their copyright.

Tutorials

Even though tutorials are also a kind of educational video, they deserve a mention in the entertainment category, too. People may search for tutorials because they actually do want to implement the tips themselves, but a lot of people will watch videos like makeup tutorials simply for the entertainment. For example, not everyone needs to actually create a full unicorn makeup effect (see Figure 8-20) or use advanced prosthetics, but they may enjoy watching someone do just that.

Fashion shows, what I’m wearing videos, outfits for the season, styling videos, interior design videos, and so many more fall into the bucket of “how I created this look.” These video formats are great for marketers to tap into as integrating products and services into these videos is often straightforward. For example, perhaps you run a small chain of hardware stores in a college town. You can create tutorial videos showing how students can create a study space in their dorm room with a few simple tips, tricks, and supplies from your store.

Super cuts

Perhaps one of the simplest forms of video entertainment that YouTube is especially good at delivering are super cuts.

A super cut is a compilation of short video clips of the same type — for example, fail videos showing people falling or making mistakes that hurt them in quick succession.

Fail Army is a YouTube channel with 14 million subscribers, and over 4.8 billion video views. It has built a following based on its super cut videos of things like “Bark: Dog Fails” (see Figure 8-21) and “Amusement Park Fails.”

Perhaps marketers can find topical areas where it may make sense to sponsor this kind of content — for example, if you operate an amusement park or make a product that could cleverly stop a fail from happening.

If you’re looking for a good laugh, just search YouTube for vines I quote every day. I found these kinds of videos when researching this chapter and lost 15 minutes of my life just transfixed by these dumb hilarious short videos. I laughed so hard I spat out my drink.

Marketers can make effective use of tons of entertaining video formats. As you watch videos on YouTube, make a note of the videos your audience may like and think about how you can integrate your marketing efforts into that format.

Who is the audience for your entertainment videos?

Think about who you want to reach with these videos. Remember, a lot of great video content is already out there, so you need to know exactly what your audience likes to watch so that you can give them a quality video that makes the cut.

Which format will your audience like the most?

Pick the format that will appeal to your audience and that makes sense for your brand to create.

For example, if you’re a marketer promoting your company’s new makeup range, it absolutely makes sense to make a series of makeup tutorials, and perhaps you could partner with a popular YouTuber to help you create them. If you’re a fashion stylist or personal shopper, you could make a series of videos about your life, your clients, your tips and tricks, and what it takes to pull together everything needed for a magazine’s editorial photoshoot. In these examples, entertainment-type content can play a role as a marketing tool.

Which content is your competition?

Don’t just look for your business competitors, but search for related entertainment videos made by YouTubers. These videos will give you clues as to what makes for a great video, which will help you get started. Ideally, you’ll find a way for your brand to bring something unique to the video so that you don’t end up making a video that no one asked for and no one needs.

Is your credibility evident?

Only make entertainment-type videos if it makes sense for your brand and your marketing goals. If you don’t have the permission or credibility to make these videos, people won’t watch.

If your company makes dog food, perhaps you can make a parody of an unboxing video where you film dogs just tearing into the packaging, which is actually quite funny.

If you’re a local decorative items and souvenir store, you don’t need to make a music video. (although if you search YouTube for Selling is Service Song, you’ll find a cringeworthy but also kind of awesome video about how someone delivers customer service.)

Do you have a brand?

Find a way to integrate your brand without compromising the video and making it feel too much like an ad. However, not including your brand means that the video doesn’t deliver any kind of marketing benefit.

It can be a fine balance and tricky to get right, but audio mentions, a logo in the corner, or imagery in the video itself of your logo or product can all work.

Viewers are happy to see brands and products integrated when it’s done well, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when done poorly.

Dove Men+Care

In 2015, Dove published a video titled “Dove Men+Care shares your first fatherhood moments this Father’s Day.” With more than 18 million views, this video, shown in Figure 8-22, is a super cut of candid video clips showing men finding out that they are soon to become dads. Their partners have each found creative ways to deliver the message — for example, you see a man opening a box to find the positive pregnancy test or a gift bag containing baby clothes — and their reactions are incredible and emotional.

Interspersed throughout the video are messages from Dove, such as “Real strength means showing you care even from the very first moment,” with the video ending with the message “Share your advice and help new dads grow stronger. #RealStrength” and the tagline “Care makes a man stronger.” Search for the long video that lasts just over a minute, watch it, and you’ll cry every time.

This video doesn’t feel like an advertisement, but it is part advertisement and part content. It’s designed to elicit an emotional reaction in the viewer, and it’s very effective at that! I’ve watched the video a hundred times, and it still gets me.

Marketers, like Dove, know that if they pull on your emotional heartstrings, they’ll be able to communicate their message and reach a massive audience of people, many of whom will share this video with friends and family.

Shareability is a tricky thing to achieve with any video, but stories of personal triumph, emotional and relatable stories of people who fight against the odds, or stories about those who are experiencing fundamental and defining moments in life tend to be very shareable. Much like memes, inspirational videos of this sort are essentially built to encourage sharing.

A meme is a humorous image, video, or piece of text that spreads rapidly across the Internet within culture. You can think of memes as shareable units of culture. People use memes to express jokes, opinions, thoughts, feelings, and commentary.

WestJet Christmas Miracle

One of the earliest examples of a marketer using the inspirational video approach on YouTube comes from WestJet, the airline who in 2013 published a video “WestJet Christmas Miracle: Real-time Giving”.

Set to Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”, the video opens with a rewritten narrated version of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which tells the story of how WestJet surprised passengers in a very unexpected way. The 5:25 long video (that’s a long ad!) shows Santa Claus, on a TV screen, interacting with travelers as they arrive at the airport to travel across Canada. While the passengers are on their plane heading to their destination, the WestJet team buys the gifts people had asked for. When the passengers arrive at the other end of their journey, the gifts are waiting for them on the carousel. Shocked passengers open gifts, from TV screens to socks and underwear to tablets and phones and even flights home. A lot of people cried.

This video, shown in Figure 8-23, has delivered more than 48 million views and is a wonderful brand campaign, demonstrating both WestJet’s service as an airline (which you should choose when flying home at Christmas to visit family) and its brand, which aims to bring joy into people’s lives throughout the year. Since the success of this video, WestJet has made videos most years at Christmas.

Volvo Trucks

Perhaps the best example of a brand creating an inspirational video to communicate a marketing message comes from Volvo.

Most people have seen the video “Volvo Trucks — The Epic Split feat. Van Damme (Live Test)” as it’s now racked up more than 90 million views (see Figure 8-24). It’s a beautifully orchestrated and visually stunning video set to the music of Enya that shows Jean Claude Van Damme (“The Muscles from Brussels”) doing a split between two moving reversing trucks, demonstrating both his prowess as a fit and coordinated artist, and Volvo’s “Dynamic Steering: technology that delivers an incredibly stable and precise ride on these largest of vehicles”.

This video wowed people when it came out in 2013 and is still being watched today. Comments from people include

“I think this is actually the best commercial I've seen in my life and, quite probably, the best commercial ever. Whoever came up with this idea should get an award or something.”

“I watch this once every few months for motivation. Never fails.”

“You know your ad rocks when people actually look for it on YouTube, not when it pops up before a video.”

Who would have thought that an advertiser could make an ad longer than five minutes, have more than 90 million people watch it (some of those views were supported with paid media), and that people still want to watch it years later?

Since this video was published, Volvo Trucks has continued to make videos that aim to inspire with their sheer audacity. Search YouTube for one of their follow-up videos, “Volvo Trucks - Look Who’s Driving feat. 4-year-old Sophie (Live Test)”, which has more than 15 million views.