Mill+ heads new global campaign for Volvo’s newest, smallest and mightiest SUV yet
June 2023 saw Volvo launch their fully electric EX30, globally. Volvo’s smallest, safest, most innovative and most environmentally friendly SUV yet. Forget what you think you knew about Volvos, the EX30 is a car for the new and next generations, aimed squarely at tech natives and a younger audience who know we need to save the planet.
To make a big noise, Volvo wanted an extensive campaign with big visuals to launch their not-so-big, big deal. From London to Lagos, Gothenburg to Georgetown, Dubai to Dubrovnik—everyone will see it. Thanks to AKQA’s brilliant creative thinking and visionary ideas, partnering with Mill+ was the perfect choice to bring it all to life for Volvo.
The massive scale of this launch required Mill+ to produce a vast campaign using every discipline in-house, from live action, VFX, design and colour.
The campaign consists of a full suite of films and imagery for the three phases of the EX30 launch; tease, reveal and TVC.
Phase one of the campaign was ‘Tease’. A beautiful and tantalising film, supported with social and stills that gave just enough away to show that there was something very special coming. The tease creative had a tough job. Show the car, but don’t show the car. Allude to the campaign’s creative conceit of big/small, AND play it all out in a vast landscape world of materials. All while making sure it’s set inside a box just big enough to fit your new shoes! Easy peasy, right?
Phase two, ‘Reveal’, a triumphant keynote style presentation with a twist, was focused on a deeper dive into the car itself. It showcased its benefits, its details and the unique Volvo technology that went into it. The ‘Reveal’ used the classic style of an unboxing to incredible effect. The six-minute film, starring none other than the Volvo CEO, Jim Rowen, who plays himself in three different sizes, imaginatively delivers the message that small is mighty.
The final piece to drop was the headline global TVC. A unique visual story of friends on a journey in the brand new EX30, which traverses in and out of the real world and the microscopic world, stunningly inspired to reflect the car’s design and materials.
So, that’s all the finished work. But let’s turn the clock back a few months to when we first talked to the clever people at AKQA who wanted us to help take it from brains to screens. We thought it sounded exciting too. But what was the catch? There had to be a catch, right?
They say fortune favours the brave and, luckily, Mill+ are used to catches and this time the catch was just up our flax-covered street. So when Volvo told us, “There’s only one car built so far, it’s in Sweden and it can’t be driven outside in the real world OR in the quantum realm”, we knew that this was exactly the type of challenge we not only relish but also have the scale and talent to deliver.
Like Mill+, it turned out that AKQA, a long-time partner with Volvo, also loves a challenge! Being such a large project, they had multiple offices and teams simultaneously working on creative. So, although it was one big launch, together, we set about producing three massive projects that overlapped in so many ways but with different creative briefs and outcomes.
After what seemed like microseconds after putting the phone down with AKQA, the ‘Teaser’ was in production. The mind-bending challenge of unlocking the physics of how to present big things in small spaces, and vice versa, got underway.
Then, after what seemed like another microsecond came the TVC live action production, and we found ourselves recceing a couple of mountain tops in Northern Spain looking for an epic actual-world location for the end scene that could mirror the incredible CGI landscapes that The Mill were conjuring up to be seen on the car’s journey in the micro world.
With Spain done it was then off to Gothenburg, Sweden, to see the actual EX30 for the first time. Only a handful of eyes in the world had been laid on this beauty so far. And, oh boy, what a car. Everyone’s first impression was, ‘Wow. This sucker is going to sell like hotcakes. Bravo Volvo.’
Shooting in Volvo’s own film studio, we set about three days of highly technical shooting focused on the actors’ performance and the car itself. Then, we hotfooted it back to our location in Spain with the actors, to dress and shoot our stunning mountain top. Luckily, the snow-covered mountain we saw on the recce had melted away to reveal sunshine and lush green as far as the eye could see. Phew.
Upon locking the edit a moment later, The Mill could finally start marrying the real and imagined together. Crafting, sculpting and building the CGI world around the live-action, developing concepts, and generating otherworldly scenes all born from the actual car’s design and textures.
How do you get the right balance of photorealism and believability vs slick design and stylisation? A microworld made of sustainable EX30 materials, e.g., the audience needed to accept the small flecks as rocks and not question the surreal billowing road surface which
suddenly turns all tech and spits a feather out of the HK speaker.
Not necessarily going for a completely photorealistic look, but a clean design that reflected the Volvo brand and pure aesthetics. Each frame is intended to live as a piece of design— graphic and bold. To get the visuals correct, The Mill team used various new tools, including AI concepts along with traditional matte painting and design.
We left our story there for a minute and transported ourselves back to Sweden for another shoot. This time a six-day shoot with Volvo’s very own CEO, Jim Rowen. This second project is an incredible send-up of the classic ‘unboxing’ video. Only this time, Jim and the car appear in three magical sizes, tiny, average and mega-sized—all a play on the car’s clever talent of being a small yet mighty power.
This film embodied a particular challenge; to be information packed and dialogue-heavy but also watchable, fun and entertaining. Oh, and to fit all that info and dialogue in, it’d need to be six-minutes long. Yikes. Six minutes is a lifetime in the commercial world but thanks to one extremely charismatic, un-camera shy CEO, some slick, lyrical copywriting and a highly enjoyable, visual wrapping, six minutes goes by in about 5 minutes 27 seconds, or thereabouts.
If that wasn’t enough to launch a new car, there was more. Some of the technological and design features in the amazing EX30 needed a bigger shout out. So, four more films focusing on the very particular and unique features of Sustainability, Design, Personalisation and, of course, being Volvo, Safety.
Phew. We could go on and tell you about all the hundreds of other assets; the social first bespoke films, the cut downs, the stills, the Insta carousels and so forth. But let’s save that for another day as, after all this reading and watching, you’ll probably be wanting to go and find out how you can get hold of your very own Volvo EX30.
So there you go, Mill+, AKQA and Volvo proving that the greatest things grow out of something small with one BIG campaign that packs a mighty punch.