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Trends and Insight in association withSynapse Virtual Production
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REDPILL's Branded Video Review: Porsche, Volvo Trucks and H&M

06/12/2016
Advertising Agency
London, United Kingdom
30
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REDPILL's Matthew Davies rounds up the week's best branded video content

Every fortnight, REDPILL reviews three new or relevant branded videos and assesses the reasons behind their social performance. RedPill’s rating system scores videos across five categories (awarding a maximum of 20% for each category): originality; on brand; creativity; craft; and shareability. The sum of all five scores produces a rating out of 100%.



Volvo Trucks - The Flying Passenger

Rating: 87%

Volvo Trucks continues it’s branded content streak. Few brands repeatedly drop content with this kind of alignment between the entertainment and showcasing the product. Van Damme’s splits hammered home the precision of Volvo’s new steering, and The Flying Passenger is its spiritual successor. The person in danger is now a paraglider, hoping the truck’s drive-train can sustain enough speed to keep him off the ground on a steep climb. Then just to up the ante, they fly him through a tunnel just large enough for the parachute to fit through.

The content suffers slightly on shareability because it’s not Van Damme - who was both known in general, and specifically for his splits, but that’s a comparison to the gold standard.


H&M Come Together – directed by Wes Anderson starring Adrien Brody

Rating: 92%

If this had come out a week earlier it would have won the Christmas adverts battle I pitched in the last branded content review. Wes Anderson is basically a real-life cheat code for marketers. From his Castel Cavalcanti for Prada, to his American Express autobiography, his nostalgic fetishism works wonderfully in a short format. He manages to pack each frame with so much information that rewatching is recommended, and because watching Wes Anderson is the equivalent of sitting around a cosy fireplace, you can’t help but share it with friends.

This makes Wes Anderson officially the best director for Christmas adverts. It’s actually rather shocking no one has done it before, but great ideas are the ones that seem obvious in retrospect. Good job, H&M.


Race drones vs. Porsche 718 Cayman

Rating: 83%

Porsche has enlisted gaming YouTuber Ali-A in its latest video - a race between the new Cayman and a hoard of racing drones. Gorgeously shot and edited, the video is adrenaline-pumping fun. While the results of the race are never in question, it still manages to be a real spectacle - almost on par with Ken Block’s Gymkhanas.

The real question is why they enlisted Ali-A as their influencer of choice. It is very possible that the brand has access to some data that shows a large percentage of Ali-A’s audience are those rare individuals - high income millennials. But this feels more like a situation when a brand went for the biggest influencer in their budget, rather than hiring the right one and then amplifying their reach.


The author, Matthew Davies, is a director at REDPILL, a specialist agency working with the world’s most exciting brands. They focus exclusively on influencer marketing and branded video, covering content strategy, creative, video production, and organic distribution. See more branded video reviews here.

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