Ceren Wende - Volvo Autonomous Solutions

How do you introduce a radically new technology under one of the world’s most established brands? For Ceren Wende, Head of Marketing & Communications at Volvo Autonomous Solutions, the answer starts with trust, but trust cannot be taken for granted. While the Volvo name provides an enormous advantage when entering autonomous transport, it also creates a responsibility to protect what the brand has built over decades. In a category where safety concerns and scepticism remain significant barriers, Ceren believes communication needs to be grounded in evidence rather than promises. From building a “content marketing machine” around technical expertise to letting journalists experience autonomous trucks first-hand, she explains why brand growth sometimes requires being careful rather than loud.

Using an Established Brand to Enter a New Category

For Ceren, brand growth goes far beyond marketing and communications. A strong reputation and recognition ultimately enables sales, and that becomes particularly valuable when a company enters a new technology, business area or business model. “When you are going into new technologies, new business areas, new business models, you’re already starting ten steps ahead of everyone,” she explains. “You don't need to build your brand from scratch; the brand is already there. That allows you to focus on other things.”

But that doesn't mean the brand can just be left alone. It needs to continuously evolve. “Your brand needs to stick to its core and know who it is and who it is not, but it also needs to grow with the times. That's the hard balance,” Ceren says. “You need to grow while staying true to who you are and remaining relevant to your core audience.”

Safety is particularly important. Volvo has spent decades building associations around safety, supported by products and technologies that reinforce that promise. But Ceren is clear that the brand name alone is not enough. “It cannot be hot air saying, ‘We’re Volvo. We’re safe. Just trust us.’” Instead, communication needs to demonstrate why an autonomous solution is safe. One example is Volvo’s approach to building autonomous trucks on the production line rather than retrofitting autonomous technology afterwards, allowing redundant backup systems to be engineered into critical functions.

That reflects a broader communication principle: talk about what you can prove. Rather than making ambitious predictions about what autonomous transport may look like years from now, Volvo Autonomous Solutions focuses on customers, product developments and engineering proof points. “We talk about what we know. We do not talk about what the future might look like,” Ceren says.

“You need to grow while staying true to who you are and remaining relevant to your core audience.”

Defining Marketing's Role in a Complex B2B Sales Journey

Having a strong brand is only useful if marketing is clear about what it needs to achieve. For Ceren, one of the most important decisions was defining Volvo Autonomous Solutions’ position in the funnel.

Unlike much of Volvo Group, which sells trucks and construction equipment, Volvo Autonomous Solutions is selling transport as a service. That creates a different marketing challenge and requires close cooperation between marketing and sales.

The buying process is also highly complex. An autonomous transport solution can involve logistics managers, operations teams, technology leaders, site managers and other stakeholders. “You’re obviously not going to get that business from a web form,” Ceren says. Instead of treating lead generation as marketing’s primary responsibility, her team focuses on awareness and early consideration: making people aware that Volvo operates in autonomous transport, explaining the service and providing credible evidence for why the solution can be trusted.

That clarity is particularly important for a small team. New channels and tactics constantly create pressure to do more, but Ceren believes marketers need to know where their responsibility starts and stops; “I think the first step is to get the strategy right: what are we doing, what are we not doing, and who are we talking to?” Once those fundamentals are clear, the team can establish the right objectives and metrics rather than reacting to every new marketing opportunity.

“I think the first step is to get the strategy right: what are we doing, wat are we not doing, and who are we talking to?”

Building a Content Marketing Machine around Expertise

One of Volvo Autonomous Solutions’ most successful marketing investments has been what Ceren calls its “content marketing machine”. Autonomous transport is a slow-moving industry where major product launches do not happen every few months. Maintaining attention therefore requires something between those milestones. For Ceren, evergreen thought leadership fills that gap.

Each year, the team identifies complex topics that deserve deeper explanation, ranging from sensors and bad-weather performance to regulation and technical standards. Subject-matter experts such as software engineers contribute their knowledge, which is then turned into long-form articles, videos and shorter social content. The team plans around a regular cadence, including roughly one major deep-dive topic each month and posts on LinkedIn and YouTube several times a week. “It’s to utilise our own people to get knowledge out there, to educate,” Ceren explains. “It builds that narrative that we know what we’re doing. And here is the evidence.”

The results suggest that this approach is gaining traction. So far in 2026, Volvo Autonomous Solutions has generated more than three million LinkedIn impressions, up 163% from the previous year, while engagements have increased by 510% to almost 170,000. YouTube views have also risen from 2.1 million in 2025 to 3.3 million in 2026. For a highly specialised B2B category, these numbers show how technical expertise can become a powerful way to build reach and engagement.

Authenticity is essential to that approach. AI is used to accelerate parts of the production process, but the underlying expertise remains human.  Long-form pieces are developed through interviews with subject-matter experts and reviewed several times. “We use AI to assist us, but all content is original content. It belongs to somebody; it is written by somebody. It is also proofread several times by people.”  

For Ceren, technology can make a small marketing team more efficient, but it cannot replace having something original and meaningful to say.

“We use AI to assist us, but all content is original content. It belongs to somebody; it is written by somebody. It is also proofread several times by people.”  

Making Autonomous Transport feel less Autonomous

Owned content is only one side of the strategy. Earned media has become another important investment, particularly when it allows people to experience the technology rather than simply read about it. In the US, Volvo Autonomous Solutions has increasingly invited journalists to ride along in autonomous trucks, including a recent experience with CNN. It demands significant preparation because the technology has to perform in front of the media, but Ceren believes the impact makes that effort worthwhile.

The objective is not simply publicity. Autonomous transport remains unfamiliar to many people, and familiarity can help reduce some of that uncertainty. “This needs to be seen. It needs to become normal to people,” Ceren explains. “Seeing it on TV is a step towards making it normal.” Alongside major media outlets, Volvo Autonomous Solutions maintains close relationships with specialist trucking and transport publications because these channels reach the logistics professionals involved in buying decisions. As those publications expand into podcasts, webcasts and other formats, they also create new ways to demonstrate the technology.

This combination of owned expertise and earned experience fits Ceren’s preference for substance over promotion. Rather than paying to place messages everywhere, the aim is to create information and experiences that are valuable enough for relevant audiences and media to engage with them. “Content marketing, evergreen content and earned media are the best investments we’ve made,” she says. “This needs to be seen. It needs to become normal to people.”

“Content marketing, evergreen content and earned media are the best investments we’ve made. This needs to be seen. It needs to become normal to people.”

Protecting the Brand while Building the Future

Communicating autonomous technology also requires restraint. The category can provoke strong reactions, particularly around safety and the future role of drivers. That affects how far Volvo Autonomous Solutions is prepared to push its communication. A bold idea may attract attention today, but Ceren believes marketers also need to ask how it will look several years from now. “Maybe you want to go really bold, but you have to think about it 200 times. Will this age well?”

That philosophy becomes even more important when working under the Volvo name. The brand provides credibility and recognition, but it also has to be protected. For Ceren, creativity should therefore never come at the expense of long-term brand equity. “The first thing you do is protect that,” she says. “Really think about the long-term impact of everything that you do and stay away from the quick wins.”

At the same time, autonomous transport is no longer simply a future proposition. Volvo Autonomous Solutions is already operating commercially in mining and quarrying and hauling customer freight in the US.

The next step is scale: making autonomous transport an increasingly established part of everyday logistics. As adoption grows and the technology moves towards fully driverless freight operations, the marketing challenge will evolve too. But Ceren’s underlying principle remains relevant: communicate what the business can demonstrate today rather than making promises about what might happen tomorrow.

“Really think about the long-term impact of everything that you do and stay away from the quick wins.”