Hollie Newton on Grey's Swell New Ad for Volvo

Grey London today releases its first piece of work for new client Volvo and The Swell is a 60 second TVC which embraces a particular emotion, rather than simply showing another car in motion.

Hollie Newton, global creative director at Grey London, below explains the film and the thinking behind it, as well as revealing why avoiding the "Sea of Shame" was an important first step.

This is the first piece of work you’ve done for Volvo; what was the brief they came to you with?

It was an unusual brief. On the one hand, we had a simple message to communicate… Tell people that the XC60 is an agile, dynamic, responsive small SUV. But it was a bigger job than that. In many ways, this is a prologue to the enormous great landslide of XC90 work on the horizon. The re-launch of Volvo.

We needed to remind people of the Volvo brand, indicate that change is afoot in a confident unexpected way, and create desire for, perhaps, their very best car on the market - the XC60. (I love the XC60, I'm totally biased. Can I have one please?). This is a taste of things to come. 

What’s the balance of nerve-wracking and exciting when you’re working on a new piece of work for a brand new client?

I'll be honest: we're flippin' lucky to have clients like Volvo. They're brave, impatient, and clever. We work together, in a close team (anyone working on Volvo - whether client side, agency side, or a specialist developer coming in for a week to help us programme indoor snow - becomes part of the Volvo Kreativ Studio). So yes, it's terrifying and exciting in equal measure, but crucially, it's not lonely. We're in it together.

This spot is unlike the majority of car commercials in that there are no windy roads or mountains; why did you decide that was the best way to go?

The last thing the world needs is another overly-retouched car, hooning down a mountain road to a soft rock soundtrack. Not only is it deathly, mind-numbingly boring, it doesn’t make you want to buy a car.

I think we can safely assume a brand new luxury car drives brilliantly. What you need to do is feel. Feel something for the brand you’re driving. Know that it says something about you as a person. That you’re not a flash git in an overly-bling douchebag machine.

Do you think consumers have become bored of/unmoved by more traditional approaches to car commercials?

Hell yes. When we began working on Volvo, the first thing we did was pin up every competitor’s print ads from across the world on a massive long wall, repeating the process with all the TV commercials. We called it The Sea Of Same.

It was surreal. Remove the logos, and you could barely tell one from the next. It’s gone past boring. I truly believe that, with the odd exception, car advertising has become so traditional as to become invisible altogether. You can’t be moved if you never notice the ad in the first place.

Why did you decide Marcus Söderlund was the best person to direct this spot?

Marcus is Swedish, so will consequently die from mortification in the face of the praise I’m about to heap on him… but he’s bloody brilliant. He has a style and aesthetic quite unique to his Swedish self. There’s an elegant, almost balletic tone to his work. A lightness of touch that fits Volvo’s tone of voice perfectly.

We use the term ‘Quietly Epic’ when judging our creative work and, funnily enough, it’s a pretty accurate description of Marcus too. The way he balances nature, humanity and technology. His utter lack of ego and puppy-like enthusiasm. He’s a director coming into his own.

What did he bring to the project?

Marcus just got it. The tone we’re trying to create for Volvo; the feel. The personality. He didn’t try to add narrative or mess with the script – he simply perfected what was there. Stripped it back, if anything. And it became all the more elegant for it. ‘The luxury of space.’ We all knew that the simpler and more elegant the film, the more powerful it would be. Marcus showed us how.

What was the hardest part of putting the project together?

The whole thing was a challenge. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t have much time in pre-production. We needed what looked like a Swedish/Scandi/European beach, but with a guaranteed swell for our two shooting days. That beach was two hours down the coast from Durban in South Africa, but it also came with a high risk of shark attacks – so we had shark nets, a water safety team, and remote shark tracking by satellite. MENTAL.

We had to work out how to shoot in the dark (in the end, for a lot of the water shots, we chose the dying light at the end of the day and graded down). We had to work out that massive great Steadicam Movi move from inside the car, out, and round. It broke on our second take and we had to pretty much do it manually – three cameramen manoeuvring, by hand, our DOP on a remote control, cursing delightfully in French.

And then there was the casting. We wanted a woman. An older woman. And a genuine, ‘do it every day’ surfer. Not a model pretending. Lisette turned up to a casting in Cape Town and saved us.