Sign in with Google My Lindström is the global head of marketing and customer experience at Volvo Cars, where she’s responsible for accelerating brand growth, expediting electrification, deepening consumer connections, and increasing online business. Here, she shares how Volvo Cars uses YouTube to deliver results across marketing objectives.
For decades, Volvo Cars has been synonymous with safety, a reputation forged by groundbreaking innovations like the three-point seat belt in 1959.
But our mission has always been about more than building great cars. We believe living life to the fullest stems from that feeling of safety, on and off the road. We encapsulate this concept as “For Life,” and it underpins every facet of our business.
For our marketing team, this means we continue to build equity around our brand’s safety foundation. As well as introducing Volvo Cars’ Scandinavian design and human-centric technology to a new generation of car drivers.
To do this, we turned to YouTube.
Shifting gears with creative canvas
People come to YouTube for many reasons: to discover a new interest, go deep on their passions, or research something they’re considering buying. And they want to watch what matters to them, unconstrained by format, genre, or style. The platform is an expansive and versatile creative canvas that’s become ideal for our storytelling. We’re able to make the most of our creative strategy there by layering three key elements:
- Compelling human storytelling: We craft narratives that resonate emotionally with our audience.
- Demonstrable technological innovation: We showcase our vehicles’ advanced features and next-generation safety in an engaging way.
- Attention-grabbing short-form content: We optimize our creative for impact, ensuring it effectively reaches customers at critical points in their journey.
A prime example of these three elements in action was the recent launch of the Volvo EX90, our new all-electric flagship. We harnessed YouTube to tell our story from multiple perspectives and to reach diverse audiences.
The campaign began with a four-minute film that positioned the EX90 as a central character in a deeply emotional, human-centric narrative — a departure from typical automotive advertising.
Watch the video
Volvo’s four-minute YouTube video showcases the development, research, engineering, testing, and data collection that went into creating its all-electric EX90.
The ad explored the hopeful anticipation of expectant parents, sparking a broader conversation, and accumulating over a million views. Beyond simple reach, YouTube allowed us to tap into culture and drive emotional connections with our audience.
From there, the narrative shifted to a retelling of the story from the car’s perspective. Sixty-second and 15-second spots showcased the EX90’s innovative technology and next-generation safety features.
Watch the video
A video ad for Volvo’s flagship all-electric EX90.
To optimize, we turned our hero assets into cut downs, so that AI-powered campaigns could bring shorter, dynamic messages to the right customers at the right moment in their shopping journeys.
Using YouTube as our primary canvas yielded great results for us. The campaign drove 3.5X search lift, boosted brand consideration by nearly 2X, and generated $80 million in earned media value. And we’re proud to say the EX90 recently won the 2025 World Luxury Car of the Year.
Tapping into culture’s fast lane
Beyond our usual campaigns, YouTube also gives us a direct line to the trends and creators shaping culture.
To reach new, relevant lifestyle audiences, we’ve forged unique partnerships with creators, like pianist and composer Chloe Flower. We teamed up with her to remix the unique sounds of our electric vehicles into original compositions.
Watch the video
Pianist and composer Chloe Flower created original music for piano, orchestra, and electric vehicle sounds for the release of the Volvo C40.
This made-for-YouTube ad delivered an immersive and novel experience, and used YouTube’s precise targeting capabilities to directly engage music fans. It achieved remarkable viewthrough rates of 44%, a full 24% above the automotive industry benchmark, while positioning Volvo Cars in a clearly differentiated way.
YouTube has become our biggest driver of brand consideration and incremental registrations, our leading indicator for sales performance.
And when it comes to creators, we haven’t stopped there. Earning organic coverage from trusted voices like Marques Brownlee has helped us build credibility with new audiences. His content unpacks the sophisticated technology underpinning our safer driving experience to an already passionate viewership.
Accelerating consideration and sales
Ultimately, YouTube has been instrumental in helping us make meaningful connections with customers across their entire purchase journey. It’s not only opened up new avenues for creative expression and cultural engagement but has also become our single biggest driver of brand consideration and incremental registrations, our leading indicator for sales performance.
The lasting connections we’ve made through our YouTube presence continue to fuel our momentum forward, cementing Volvo Cars’ leadership in the vehicle electrification landscape. In 2024, for example, electrified cars constituted 46% of our global sales, representing a substantial 33% increase from the preceding year.
As we look ahead, we are excited to see where these roads take us next — For Life.
