It sounded crazy, even suicidal. Jack up a tractor trailer to 70 MPH, drive it up a ramp and jump it over a multi-million dollar Formula 1 race car whizzing just below.

The EMC team that dreamed up the stunt had only one shot at perfection. Working in partnership with the Lotus Formula 1 Team, they co-opted a test track at Bentwaters Park in Suffolk, England last November and set a world tractor trailer jump record with distance of 83 feet, seven inches. Car and drivers were safe. Truck wondered what the heck hit it.

The Internet when bonkers. The stunt has logged more than 45 million views and mountains of press coverage. For EMC, it fit perfectly with the theme of record-setting performance that has dominated its recent advertising campaigns. The spots have generated worldwide interest for their offbeat and memorable concepts, such as packing 26 dancers into a Mini Cooper automobile. But they’re all part of that record-setting theme that harmonizes perfectly with EMC’s emphasis on performance.

“Why should consumer marketing have all the fun?,” asks Greg Gotts, vice president of creative at the storage giant, in this Video Story created by SiliconANGLE Media‘s theCUBE team. The 5:23 video below tells how EMC broke the mold of B2B marketing with concepts that borrowed from the best of consumer advertising and mixed in world-class tracking and measurement to create an unmatched lead generation machine.

EMC cracked the code on B2B marketing after Jeremy Burton, now EMC’s president of products and marketing, joined the company in 2010.  For the first time in history it can measure 100 percent of advertising return, and smart marketers are using that data to create better experiences.

A new breed of B2B marketing

EMC has a unique history among B2B marketers of using daring stunt videos (several of which have set Guinness World records) to creatively connect its product offerings to the real need to redefine IT operations – and, of course, entertain a busy and distracted audience. In our exclusive video below, you can hear Gotts, and Senior Director of Data Science Michael Foley, explain a little about the company’s approach to viral videos as part of its overarching marketing strategy.

Gotts shares the secret sauce in B2B social marketing as advertising: “If we do something cool or funny the value proposition gets baked into the joke or the activity…and if you laugh at our joke you get the value proposition that we are trying to make.”

The truck-jumping video generated more than 45 million organic online views, 30,000 YouTube “Likes” and more than 800 pieces of media and blog outlet coverage. It was one of the most successful tech B2B viral videos ever.

It all ties back to EMC’s marketing strategy and an unmatched  lead generation and measurement program that tracks prospects from their first video view through to conversion. “We’ve gone from anonymity bringing together 30 different sources of information in a view of customers that allows us to contact them directly with great response,” says Foley.

Some of the stats behind the historic the viral truck/F1 stunt:

–          45+ million online views globally

–          30,000 YouTube “Likes”

–          19,538 peer-to-peer YouTube shares

–          67,700 Facebook shares

–          20,000 Facebook comments

–          9,000 Tweets

–          800+ pieces of media and blog outlet coverage

Image via EMC