Van Damme wins the Internet With Awesome Car Commercial

When it comes to reflexively sharable content, it’s tough to beat an incredible physical spectacle. Violent crashes and “naughty” content obviously have limited sharability. Not so for amazing – almost inhuman – feats. And that’s pretty much where Volvo went in a recent ad for their new steering technology.

They asked notorious action hero, and incredibly flexible human being, Jean Claude Van Damme to do one of his famous splits to help them advertise their new steering technology.

Ronn Torossian says this sort of content has several marks of excellent marketing, and superb media relations. First, it’s unique. There aren’t a lot of dudes doing splits while riding between two massive trucks out there … even in the wilds of the web. Sure, a lot of people have tried it. But few, if any, have succeeded. Until now.

Second, the ad takes something familiar (in this case, Van Damme doing his leg splits), and takes it to an entirely different level. Torossian calls this technique “promising, then raising the bar.” People gravitate toward the familiar, but they react to the impressive, or “impossible.”

If you want people clicking on, and reflexively sharing your content, make them react emotionally. Blow their mind, make them laugh, or make them cry. Make it all but impossible for them to NOT share your content.

Torossian says to make this happen you have to put some thought and planning into your content. Don’t just post or share whatever you come across. Have a theme, and use your social media content to CONTROL the conversation.

When you just puke up whatever is on your web page, not only are you wasting your readers’ time, you are teaching them that your content has no real value to them. But, if your content is engaging, and informative and – again, most importantly – emotionally connective then you won’t have to ask them to read, and watch, and share. They will do that because we LOVE to share the things we enjoy.

Unlock that secret of human nature and then watch as your online interactions and exponentially explode.

Read more from Ronn Torossian:

Ronn Torossian on Forbes
Ronn Torossian on Medium
Ronn Torossian on LinkedIn
Ronn Torossian Update
Ronn Torossian on Business Insider