In just five days, this new viral ad by Volvo has garnered over 22 million views. I know in the advertising industry, having an ad become viral has become a a standard goal and can be seen as a metric for a successful ad. Having one’s ad go viral does provide real benefits, as it leads to many user generated content and publicity thereby increasing the exposure and reach of one’s ad. However, this Volvo ad made me think twice if having your ad become viral is enough to be considered as a successful ad campaign.

One of the reasons why this ad has gone viral is because of the unique stunt done by Action star Jean-Claude Van Damme. When I first saw the ad, my attention was drawn to the split rather than the great steering control of the trucks or Volvo. This made me think what the objective of the ad was.

At the end of the ad, Volvo had to leave a note stating that the purpose of the test done in ad was to showcase Volvo Dynamic Steering. There is a considerable good of amount of viewers of this ad who probably just shared it because of the stunt and did not think too much of the Volvo trucks. While being viral provides more greater reach, I tend to doubt if the message of the ad was clearly communicated to the viewers.

An example of an ad, albeit viral, did not seem to successfully communicate what it intended to. An ad by Internet Explorer became viral because of a majority of Internet users could relate to it but did not necessarily agree to its message, which was essentially Internet Explorer is now back and better. In the end, the ad, although relatable to its target market, was not enough to entice its previous users to try them again. Relating this back to the Volvo ad, I think the Volvo ad might also have the same fate – although viral, the message was not clearly communicated. And for me, an ad, depending on its objective, is only successful when it is able to communicate its message and have actionable results done by its consumers (i.e. People switching to Internet Explorer).