Existential Vans – Volkswagen Service Campaign

Project Title: "Existential Vans – Volkswagen Service Campaign" Role: Director & Creative Lead

Challenge: How do you make routine van maintenance feel urgently hilarious? Volkswagen needed to highlight their same-day service without traditional sales tactics. The ask: turn a mundane topic into absurdist comedy that resonates with freelancers’ daily chaos.

Creative Approach: I weaponized dry, deadpan humor to dramatize the existential dread of a van-less world. Each spot frames tradespeople as philosophers of despair: a carpenter reduced to pontificating about oak veneers in his PJs, an electrician dangling mid-air from a faulty lamp hook — all while a monotone VO dissects their plight like a nihilist car manual. The punchline? Volkswagen’s service center, where melodrama is swapped for efficiency.

Client: Volkswagen Belgium (via TBWA Belgium)

Objective: Position VW’s service as the antidote to freelancer purgatory.

Tone: Coen Brothers direct an IKEA manual — bone-dry absurdism meets pragmatic wit.

Key Themes: Modern work paralysis, the quiet horror of relying on tools, anti-salesmanship.

Visual Style: Static, symmetrical shots (inspired by Roy Andersson) turned cluttered living rooms into tragicomic stages.

VO Delivery: A voice actor channeling “AI after three espressos” nailed the script’s bleak irony.

Editing: Jarring cuts from chaos (a florist sobbing over wilting roses) to VW’s sterile, efficient garage — a visual “mic drop.”

Result: A campaign that trended organically among freelancers, with a 28% uptick in service bookings. Client testimonial: “You made oil changes feel like existential crises. Exactly what we needed.”

Why It Works: This project epitomizes my love for turning bland briefs into cultural moments — blending highbrow satire with blue-collar relatability. By treating vans as existential lifelines, we transformed a service ad into a darkly funny mirror for anyone who’s ever panicked over a missing tool.