Actor Ajay Devgn recreates his iconic introductory scene from his debut, Phool Aur Kaante in a recent ad for Mahindra Furio trucks.
I had recently written about Mahindra Furio trucks in a different context.
A lot of people have commented about Devgn’s new stunt saying that it is a copy of the world-famous ‘epic split’ ad by Volvo Trucks featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme.
To be fair, Devgn did perform a bike-based ‘epic split’ in Phool Aur Kaante and he refers to that scene in the ad too – that it is exactly 30 years since that movie’s release makes this ad relevant context for the recreation.
However, a split on two trucks was indeed Volvo’s original idea and Jean-Claude Van Damme pulled it off in style so impressively that the ad is seen as a landmark when it comes to digital campaigns. Considering Ajay Devgn too performs his stunt on two trucks, it does come across a knock-off of the Volvo campaign, despite Ajay’s impressive credentials as a fantastic stunts performer (no doubt carrying over from his father’s legacy as a stunt choreographer).
Ajay also does not perform a split with the two Furio trucks – he just performs a basic stunt by riding on them both, unlike Jean-Claude Van Damme who performed a perfect split while riding the two Volvo trucks.
What is more interesting is why the stunt is relevant to the respective brands – Volvo and Mahindra Furio.
With Mahindra Furio, Ajay explains it as ‘double guarantee’ – so, the two trucks’ context is simply to hang the word ‘double’ and nothing more. And since his reference to his debut introductory scene is included in the script, there is some semblance of context of why all this is happening, no matter how elementary and weak it may seem.
But, for Volvo, there was an extremely tangible reason for why Jean-Claude Van Damme performed the epic split and the reason goes far, far beyond just creating a highly watchable stunt and go viral.
Volvo’s ‘epic split’ campaign was part of a much larger content plan by Volvo and is one of the best trojan horses in the world of digital marketing.
That video was primarily about Volvo’s dynamic steering technology that offers superior precision and stability in terms of control. Van Damme was the trojan horse to make us all watch an astonishing demonstration of Volvo’s dynamic steering.
To be honest, even when I watched Phool Aur Kaante for the first time (while in school), I was amazed at the two bike riders because they had to coordinate their driving speed to ensure that the film’s director’s son (who is making his debut) does not fall off the bike. Of course, it requires guts to perform that stunt as the guy who is riding on those two bikes, but the riders’ effort was crucial to him performing that stunt in the first place.
That is the entire premise of Volvo’s campaign – to lure us in with a showy stunt, but remember what enabled that stunt.
You could obviously argue: “Who is going to remember what enabled that stunt? Didn’t we all gawk at the video for Van Damme’s split alone?”. Yes, you are right. A lot of us watched it simply for the eye-popping stunt.
But what was the thought process behind the campaign from the agency, Forsman & Bodenfors?
The agency did not see the campaign as a B2C campaign despite the star power involved. They always saw it as a B2B campaign. The reason for the use of the star is to get people to become Volvo’s media and compel them to share it and make it go globally viral.
So who is the real target audience? The truck drivers!
Volvo was having a problem within its industry – trucking companies (who are Volvo’s buyers) were having trouble hiring drivers because it wasn’t a cool job anymore. And drivers were influenced by everything around them including their spouses who worried about the safety of the vehicle at high speeds.
So, the agency actually wanted to ‘go wide, but hit tight’. Think of it as a funnel – the top of the funnel (the wide portion) is where Volvo attracts the attention of the whole world through the eye-popping stunt. But the core of the audiences is actually truck drivers and truck buyers who form the bottom of the funnel since they are impressed with the precise steering controls and invest in Volvo trucks. To get the attention of the bottom of the funnel, the top is crucial since they become Volvo’s global media vehicle by being impressed with the video and sharing very, very widely. That way, Volvo could do away with expensive media to put the video everywhere on their own – people become Volvo’s media.
The video always worked at two levels – at one level (our, normal people level) we were impressed with it and shared it widely. At another level, it stunned the target audience because they saw something else too in the video (that we may miss and not care for since we may never be buyers of trucks from Volvo).
And this is not the only video that Volvo produced on these lines. They have a whole lot of videos on very similar lines, but without a star like Van Damme. And almost all of them reach multi-million views on YouTube for the same reason – the normal viewers come for the wonder, while the specific target audience views it for the vehicle’s quality and precision.
The Van Damme video (along with all the other videos) was a mega hit for Volvo in terms of impact too, not just YouTube views.
All these nuances are, understandably, missing in the Mahindra Furio ad. The ad was never about the trucks’ impressive features or steering precision. It was only about the guarantee the company bestowed upon the purchase of the trucks, to demonstrate that since they are super confident about their product’s overall quality and utility value, they are offering some monetary guarantees. It works only on one, direct level, but since Devgn’s own debut scene is the connecting link, it is not entirely hollow either, though not thought-through or compelling.