Volvo turns rivals' Super Bowl ads into its own

The biggest ad break, without a single ad

For Super Bowl XLIX on 1 February 2015, Volvo bought no commercial airtime.¹ A 30-second spot during the game cost about USD 4.5 million, and Volvo's media budget was a fraction of its rivals'.^2,3 Instead, Volvo and Grey New York announced the "Volvo Interception", a social alternative to the traditional game-day commercial.⁴ The idea placed the brand inside the most expensive minutes of American television without paying for any of them.

The mechanism was simple. From 6:30 p.m. ET, whenever a car commercial aired during the game, viewers could tweet the name of someone they cared about with the hashtag #VolvoContest.¹ Volvo replied to every eligible entry, the nominator explained why that person deserved the car, and judges chose five winners, each to receive a new Volvo XC60.^1,4 Bodil Eriksson, EVP, Product, Brand, Marketing & Communications, Volvo Cars of North America, framed it in the brand's own terms: "People have always been at the heart of Volvo, inspiring the products and experiences we create."¹

Borrowing the rivals' budget

The campaign's real media plan belonged to the competition. According to Grey, Mercedes, Lexus and other carmakers spent USD 60 million on Super Bowl commercials, and every one of those spots became a cue to talk about Volvo.⁵ Volvo reinforced the effect with paid Twitter promotions. Jim Nichols, product and technology communications manager at Volvo Cars North America, explained that they "will target competitor handles and trending hashtags".⁶

This is where the move speaks about the brand. A challenger that cannot outspend its rivals chose not to compete on their terms at all. The spectacle the larger brands paid for became the trigger for a conversation that carried Volvo's name, and the more lavish a rival's commercial, the more attention it handed over. The tone stayed generous rather than combative: the prize went to a person someone else considered deserving. That kept the stunt consistent with what Volvo presented as its people-first philosophy.⁴

A conversation that lasted the whole game

During the three-hour telecast, more than 55,000 tweets carried #VolvoContest, at peaks of up to 2,000 tweets per minute.^5,7 The hashtag trended three times on Twitter, and Volvo was mentioned nearly 114,000 times, the third-highest figure of any automotive brand.⁷ WE, the PR agency on the campaign, reports that Volvo was the only carmaker to trend nationally and globally that day.⁸ The online video passed 3.4 million views within a week, the website drew more than 116,000 visitors in two weeks, and more than 10,700 people completed the nomination form.⁷ The campaign is credited with more than 230 million earned media impressions.^2,7

The commercial effect followed. In February 2015 the XC60 recorded the highest sales increase of any car in its segment, 70.7 per cent year on year.^2,3 For a brand that sat in the background of the game, it turned a night of other carmakers' commercials into measurable interest in its own product.

Five winners and a Grand Prix

In June 2015 Volvo named the five winners, among them a woman nominated by her father for her Peace Corps literacy work, and a nurse nominated by her daughter for her work with emotionally disturbed children.⁹ Eriksson, by then Executive Vice President, Marketing, Brand & Communications, Volvo Cars, said: "We wanted to celebrate people and the people that matter most to them."⁹ She added that "the response was tremendous and we believe the campaign brought us much closer to our customers."⁹

At the 62nd Cannes Lions festival, the work won the Grand Prix in Direct, chosen from 2,813 entries.^9,10 Judy John, CEO and chief creative officer of Leo Burnett Canada and president of the Direct jury, said: "Smart, strategic, creative and real-time, Volvo zagged and created a new conversation which hijacked The Superbowl."¹⁰ It also took a Gold and a Silver Lion in PR, a One Show Gold Pencil and a Shorty Award.^5,8 For Volvo, the jury's word "zagged" described the brand as much as the campaign: a carmaker that gained attention by stepping aside from the convention everyone else followed.

A pattern Volvo repeated

The approach stayed with the brand. In 2019 Volvo and Grey New York again stayed away from a Super Bowl commercial and launched the S60 with a contest that asked viewers to look at the car rather than the ads.¹¹ Bob Jacobs, vice president of brand, product and communications, Volvo Car USA, spoke of "activating around the Super Bowl versus investing in the traditional TV approach".¹¹ What began as a workaround for a small budget had become a recognisable way for Volvo to appear at the biggest media event of the American year, by turning the absence of a commercial into its message.