A documentary for Scania

The assignment

Scania Newsdesk wanted to provide insight into the advanced product development and highlight the many different professional groups involved in the product. Appelberg was assigned the task of telling the story of AXL by following the almost two-year-long and top-secret project – from the first kick-off meeting to concrete sketches, test drives and launch.

The solution

To create a credible documentary narrative, we had five key members of the project guide the viewer through the process, with the film explaining both the level of innovation and the dedication that the people behind AXL showed during its development. New interviews were then added to the documentary material and the result is the eleven-minute mini-documentary “The Making of Scania AXL – Autonomous Truck Documentary”. The film was distributed on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

The result

The film was a key element of the launch of AXL, and the concept vehicle made a big and immediate impact online. The self-driving, cabless truck was called “the best thing on the Internet” by the BBC’s legendary automotive programme Top Gear. The positive response was not only important from a product perspective, but it also marked a major step forward for the Scania brand.

In just three days, the film received over 80,000 organic views on YouTube, while the motoring site Jalopnik, which has 300,000 Twitter/X followers called it “droolworthy”. After two weeks, there were more than 225,000 views, still completely organic, and by March 2020 the number of views had reached 291,000, with 3,000 likes. A sponsored post on Facebook led to film reaching more than 1.2 million people and received 6,000 interactions. On Instagram TV, it received  156,000 organic views.