Tag: Jean Claude Van Damme

Happy Holiday Videos 2013: Agency Stunts

Welcome back. Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Now for a great start to 2014.

Taking off from my last post, here are a series of holiday action videos created by agencies around the world in their lead up to Christmas 2013. By “holiday action videos” I mean greetings built around a single visible action or interaction, not a passive message.

Holiday greetings that behave like products

The mechanism across this set is simple. Use the “holiday card” moment as permission to ship a stunt, an installation, or an interactive video that people can experience rather than merely watch.

In global agency culture, holiday cards are a low-stakes sandbox for experimentation that teams can ship fast and share widely.

The real question is whether your greeting can demonstrate something people can experience, not just a sentiment you can post.

This format is worth copying because it turns a seasonal hello into proof of craft.

Why this format keeps working

These pieces earn attention because they trade greeting-card sentiment for an observable action. Put in a coin. Click a button. Gather people in front of a webcam. One clear trigger, one visible result.

Extractable takeaway: If you want something to travel during peak-season noise, design a one-step interaction that produces a visible payoff, and make the payoff easy for someone else to describe in a sentence.

Christmas Chocolate Coin Factory by W+K London

Wieden+Kennedy London turned their Hanbury Street office window into a Christmas installation. Passers-by who inserted a 1 pound coin into Dan & Dave’s Chocolate Coin Factory activated the machine on display which then dispensed a special gold Belgian chocolate coin at the other end. All the money collected from this coin factory was donated towards building a new playground for Millfields Community School in Hackney, East London.

Disrupted Christmas by Holler

Holler, an agency from Sydney, created a live interactive installation that gave the general public a chance to disrupt the agency as it worked throughout the day. Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS) units were hacked and hooked up to the Internet via IP cameras. Then key members of the agency were connected to the EMS units, and the Internet via a live stream. The public could then watch the agency staff online and instantaneously zap them at will with the click of a button.

For each disruption the agency donated $1 to The Factory, a local community centre with a long history of supporting socially and economically disadvantaged local residents.

The More the Merrier by Publicis Groupe

The Publicis Groupe was back again with another Maurice Lévy holiday video. This time they worked with DigitasLBi to create a video that uses your webcam to detect how many faces are watching together, and then adapts the video based on the number of viewers.

The Epic Christmas Split by Delov Digital

Delov Digital from Hungary used Chuck Norris to top Jean-Claude Van Damme’s epic Volvo split with the help of some serious digital enhancement.

A repeatable structure for next year’s greeting

  • Give the audience one trigger. A single action that anyone can explain and repeat.
  • Make the payoff visible. Something that changes on-screen or in the real world, immediately.
  • Design for retellability. If the idea cannot be summarized in one sentence, it will not spread.
  • Let craft do the selling. Use the holiday excuse to demonstrate what you can build, not just what you can say.

A few fast answers before you act

What makes “holiday action videos” different from normal holiday ads?

They are built around a visible action or interaction. The greeting is the excuse. The experience is the asset that people talk about and share.

Why do agencies use holiday cards as a playground for experimentation?

The stakes are lower and the audience is receptive. That creates room to try unusual formats, technical tricks, and interactive mechanics that would be harder to justify in a client campaign.

What is the common mechanism across the best ones?

One clear trigger and one clear payoff. Insert a coin and get a coin back. Click a button and something happens. Add more people and the video changes.

How do you choose a mechanic that people will actually try?

Pick a one-step trigger that feels effortless, then make the payoff obvious within seconds. If someone cannot explain both in one sentence, the interaction will not travel.

How do you keep it from feeling like a gimmick?

Anchor the interaction in a simple human reward. Delight, togetherness, surprise, or a small act of good. Then keep the mechanic effortless so the idea does not collapse under friction.

Volvo Trucks: The Epic Split

Brands all over the world are trying to create branded content. Volvo did that with great success last month when they filmed a hamster drive their entire truck up a mountain.

Now, Volvo demonstrates the precision and directional stability of its dynamic steering by getting Jean-Claude Van Damme to carry out his famous split between two reversing Volvo FM trucks. Here, “dynamic steering” refers to the steering system helping the truck hold a steady line under motion. The video, since release, is reported to have already passed 7 million views.

A feature demo disguised as spectacle

The mechanism is as clean as it gets. Take a technical claim, steering stability under motion. Express it in one unmistakable image that needs no explanation. Two trucks moving backwards in sync, a human balancing point-to-point between them, and the steering system as the silent hero.

In global industrial and automotive marketing, the most reusable branded content is engineered proof that compresses a technical benefit into a single, legible visual.

By “engineered proof,” I mean a demonstration where the product capability is the only plausible explanation for what you see.

Why the internet did the media buy for them

This lands because it is instantly readable and instantly arguable. People share it to say “this is real.” People share it to say “this is impossible.” Either way, the product claim travels with the argument.

Extractable takeaway: If your product advantage is hard to feel in a 30-second explanation, translate it into a one-frame “impossible” moment. The real question is “what made that possible.” Then let the audience debate the stunt while your feature becomes the answer.

It also avoids the common branded-content trap of overstorytelling. The brand stays in the background, the demonstration stays in the foreground, and the audience does the meaning-making in their own words.

How to borrow this pattern without a movie star

  • Start with one feature you can prove. Pick a claim that can be demonstrated, not merely asserted.
  • Design for instant comprehension. If a still frame cannot tell the story, simplify the setup.
  • Make the proof self-contained. The audience should not need a voiceover to understand what is being tested.
  • Keep the brand restraint. Overbranding weakens believability. Let the test carry the persuasion.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Volvo’s “The Epic Split” demonstrating?

It is designed to demonstrate the precision and directional stability of Volvo’s dynamic steering by showing two reversing trucks holding a steady path while Jean-Claude Van Damme performs a split between them.

Why does this count as branded content instead of “just an ad”?

The primary value is the demonstration itself. The content is built to be watched and shared as a feat, with the product benefit embedded in the feat rather than delivered as a sales message.

What makes a stunt like this more shareable than a typical product film?

Instant readability plus high stakes. A single image communicates the premise, and the audience immediately wants to test whether it is real, which drives sharing and discussion.

How do you know the spectacle is actually proving the feature?

If the moment works as a still frame, stays understandable without voiceover, and the technical claim is the only plausible explanation, then the spectacle is doing real demonstration work, not just decoration.

How can smaller brands apply the same approach?

Reduce the ambition, not the logic. Prove one feature with one clear test, make it understandable in one glance, and remove anything that distracts from the proof.