Mats Bredborg, head of customer cluster utility at Volvo CE, shares how storytelling, bold marketing and a relentless push for electrification are transforming a traditionally conservative industry.
At the top of your LinkedIn profile are the words “electrification evangelist.” Please explain.
One of the biggest obstacles facing the shift to clean fuel is inertia. People are naturally conservative and changing from a well-established solution – the diesel engine – to electric machines is as much a communication challenge as a technical one. After 13 years in marketing, I felt my PR skills would be well used in promoting the many benefits of switching to electric machines.
My consistent message in the speaking engagements that I’m lucky enough to have is that, in order for our industry to change, we need to do something different: we need to disrupt the status quo, embrace new ways of working and adopt a mindset that accepts the reality that we don’t have all the answers, or know the precise destination, but we need to start the journey towards an electric future now anyway. This isn’t always a popular message, but I continue anyway, in the hope that it gets through. Hence why ‘electrification evangelist’ is in my LinkedIn profile.
You have been at Volvo for a number of years and headed up all kinds of different areas: global director of brand and core value management, head of brand and market communication, head of digital infrastructure, head of customer cluster. Walk us through your career to date.
My dad worked at Volvo for his whole life. When I came out of high school, he asked his colleague in HR about opportunities for me at Volvo. The next day, I was learning how to weld. I went away to study and then came back as a mechanical engineer. We were planning to launch a new product in America and, as I was born and raised in Sweden, I was delighted to be sent to the US to work on this new excavator.
Then, Volvo bought a factory in Korea and I was sent there to work on making more excavators, which ultimately became the bedrock of the whole company.
At that time (it was 1999) the internet was the latest thing and every business needed a shop window on the web. Senior management in Sweden correctly predicted that the internet would be crucial for the business and they came to the conclusion that North America was 18 months ahead of the curve. The call went out internally for ‘any member of the Volvo team in North America who knows anything about the internet.’ My boss said he knew someone: me.
Next, I found myself heading up the initiative to build the US website. We hired a team, poached a guy from General Motors and went to work. Then the leadership team decided to do the same thing in Europe and I was the right man at the right time.
After several years working on the digital side, I wanted to get back into the core business and yellow metal. I took up a role as Head of Sales in Marketing and then Brand Management. Really good branding needs to be a bit edgy in order to be noticed. I soon realized that I had a talent for disruption, but I also realized that to do great marketing, you need to really understand the business. We had this big problem in North America – called Caterpillar. It was such a strong and established brand – how could we make Volvo Construction Equipment stand out This was the home of Hollywood after all, so I came up with the idea of shooting a movie. Who better to star than 1980s action hero – and Swede – Dolph Lundgren? I contacted him and asked: ‘Can we do a commercial?’ He agreed and the result was fantastic. Very tongue-in-cheek, Dolph acts as a tough boot camp drill instructor for a team of Volvo machines, who ‘exercise’ to the tune of 80s pop song Pump Up the Jam! It was so different from any other marketing in the normally conservative construction machinery sector that it stood out and got Volvo noticed. And not just in the US but in Europe too. It was great fun.
With the EV revolution building and Tesla share price soaring, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the construction industry would also go electric, I had no experience but was charged (no pun intended) with pulling a team together, and then we started the long (longer than we expected) journey to real change. At Volvo CE we believe that electrification in construction machinery is essential. It’s not only going to save the world, it’s going to make the cities much cleaner. And it has operational and total cost of ownership benefits. I started writing about this on LinkedIn and, at first, I only had around 500 followers, but then everything changed after an unplanned presentation at a conference.
I was asked to go to London to attend an event as a senior member of the Volvo team was due to speak. But it was during Covid and the guy from Volvo had to be isolated and couldn’t do his presentation. I was asked to step in. I was introduced to the room as an expert, and as I spoke about electrification, I could feel my mobile pulsing in my pocket as more and more people connected with me on LinkedIn.
Today, I have over 15,000 followers and there is a power in those numbers. We are all aligned on this crusade for electrification. For some time, I have been focused on driving internal change at Volvo, but now I am focusing more on external initiatives and communications.
I’m still not an expert, but being good in business is about being a good middleman. My skill is connecting people and having discussions and learning from people around us – not always those who are directly involved in our industry, but the people who are affected by our industry. My hope is that this diverse and eclectic group of people will figure out how to get electrification embedded in the construction industry.
Recruiting Dolph Lundgren to star as a boot camp drill instructor proved successful for Volvo.
What’s the offer at Volvo Construction Equipment?
We sell construction machines. In terms of numbers, while there are relatively fewer large machines compared with smaller ones, it is the bigger machines that have been the focus of nearly all of the emissions regulations. As a result, larger machines are quite clean, while unregulated small equipment has relatively high emissions. And it is these smaller machines that are mostly deployed in cities, where the world’s population increasingly lives – and breathes. This is no small issue – if you stopped the emissions from the smallest compact excavators in London, for instance, you would reduce pollution by 10%.
Are people buying electric machines in high numbers?
The amount of revenue that electric vehicles represents is just 1.4% at the moment. This isn’t going to solve society’s climate or air quality challenges. The electric products already exist, but inertia, as I mentioned above, is hard to overcome. But what will be the catalyst for a rapid increase in electric machines is not yet clear, but may include legislation or a drop in the price of these machines as volume and economies of scale increase.
How is your team structured?
We have segment leaders. They go into a specific utility segment that we think we can electrify: for example, these could be energy or telecoms. We ask quite challenging questions: Are these businesses willing to pay more for their equipment? Do they understand the benefits of buying clean air? Other times we have teams who go into businesses and analyze how operations could become more electrified. That feeds into our research and development and technology and informs what kind of products we should make and how we should take these products to market.
Mats is a keynote lecturer on all matters electric construction.
What was your first memory of a marketing success that you were part of where you felt: ‘This is the role for me’?
When I worked as a design engineer, I thought the coolest thing we could do with an excavator was to have an option to have a chrome exhaust pipe! I was 24 at the time. I proposed the idea and I was allowed to do it. However, nobody chose this option and I couldn’t understand why, as it looked so cool.
So I contacted the marketing department. We put together a flyer and circulated the idea that a chrome exhaust would look great on the excavator. Today, if you ever see one of those excavators, the owners almost always choose the chrome option. I learned that unless you market your idea, no one will know about it. This experience was formative: I realized that you needed both the idea and the marketing to bring something to life.
The campaign for Volvo Construction champions how quiet electric machinery can be.
How do you rate the value of emotional connection with a brand campaign?
My Dolph Lundgren campaign triggered emotion. But emotion alone is not enough. There has to be some kind of message. We’re in a B2B industry, so there needs to be information to help you make the change to move from one brand to another. But the emotional connection is very important.
I’m going to London tomorrow to do a presentation. I will begin the presentation with the logical arguments for electrification: the facts and figures about London and what needs to change. The last piece of the presentation is an article from the BBC about the 10-year-old girl who died because of air pollution. There are 4,000 premature deaths in London that can be attributed to pollution.
This is something we have the power to change. When communicating, an emotional connection is important in any marketing, but in B2B there also needs to be tangible information to help support business decision making.
Volvo’s industry-leading electric machinery and chargers come in a variety of sizes and deliver full-powered operation from urban construction and demolition through to landscaping and agriculture.
Could you tell us about an initiative on your watch that you’re especially proud of?
Volvo Construction is a traditional industry. Our products traditionally have no published prices. When we began our electrification mission, which are themselves disruptive, we forced through that we needed to be transparent and consistent on pricing. This is marketing – as was our ‘add silence’ campaign, which highlighted the remarkable quietness gained by not having diesel engines running. Marketing has the power to really push the boundaries.
What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?
The myth that marketing doesn’t work. Marketing does work.
What advice would you give your younger self?
One thing that I would do differently is to engage with the senior management very early. Don’t work in isolation. If you have a problem selling something, often the first thing we do is to look at the product and then we look at the distribution – we look at everything that is downstream from us. Instead of looking there, we should ask ourselves: how do we encourage more people to be aware of the product so that they want it? It is a challenge for many B2B businesses. The way to overcome it is to have a seat at the table with senior management.
Volvo Construction has collaborated with The Lego Group and produced a series of Lego Tecnic sets based on Volvo machinery.
What question would you like to ask the next senior marketer I interview?
How do you connect a dollar spent on marketing to your revenue? What kind of metrics do you use to connect those two things in your industry? For example, you might say, ‘We got 10,000 likes on YouTube,’ but if that is a valuable metric to you, can you show how that connects to your sales?
If there’s one thing you know about marketing, it is…
If I am honest, I don’t fully understand it. I cannot predict whether something will work as well as I hoped. I’m frequently surprised by what works and what doesn’t work. For example, one weekend I built one of our new Volvo Lego model kits, and on a whim decided to record my (slow) progress on a time-lapse camera. When I was done, I published that on LinkedIn and forgot about it. 143,000 people looked at it. I could never have predicted that. Welcome to the crazy, often incomprehensible world of marketing.
You might die tomorrow, so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency helping brands do spectacular stuff people like to talk about. wyw.agency.
This interview has already appeared in The Drum. Discover the best campaigns, industry insights and interviews from world-leading marketers, creatives and more.
