Volvo Cars is trying to follow in the footsteps of Volvo Trucks and strike it big with a commercial featuring a celebrity. Following Volvo Trucks’ immensely successful ad featuring Jean Claude Van Damme, which garnered 68.5 million views on YouTube, Volvo Cars has picked football star and Swedish national team captain, Zlatan Ibrahimovicm, for its latest commercial.
It’s a daring ad, to say the least, as the “Made by Sweden” commercial features a new version of the country’s national anthem, with the lyrics composed by Ibrahimovic himself and the music by Max Martin.
Born in Sweden from a Bosnian father and a Croatian mother, the Paris Saint-Germain soccer star is shown driving a Volvo XC70, hunting, bathing in a frozen lake and spending time with his family while the voice-over (Ibrahimovic again) reads his interpretation of Sweden’s national anthem.
The commercial may also be seen as a reply to those criticizing Ibrahimovic for not singing the national anthem ahead Sweden’s matches. As he boldly explains, “it has just never clicked with me to sing these words. This new anthem is just what we need. The old one was long and boring.”
Ibrahimovic is said to have been paid between 10 and 12 million Swedish crowns (€11.3-13.6 million) to star in this commercial. We know you’re curious, so scroll down to watch the commercial – just make sure you have the captions turned on for the English translation.
By Dan Mihalascu
VIDEO