ARCHIVESandvik Built a Smash-Proof Guitar and the World Watched
Sandvik's "The Smash-Proof Guitar" is a 2019 film campaign created in Sweden by Forsman & Bodenfors in which the industrial technology company engineered a fully metal, 3D-printed guitar and challenged guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen to destroy it on stage, turning an act of rock theatre into a demonstration of advanced manufacturing capability.
Launched on April 9, 2019, in Sweden, the campaign was developed for Sandvik Coromant, the cutting tools and machining solutions division of the wider Sandvik group. The central objective was visibility and relevance: Sandvik operates at the frontier of materials science and precision engineering, yet remains largely invisible to general audiences and prospective talent. As Klas Forsström, President of Sandvik Machining Solutions, stated at launch, according to PR Newswire, "We don't make products for consumers, so people don't realize how far in the forefront our methods are." The campaign was designed to close that gap. The smash-proof guitar itself functioned as both product demonstration and cultural provocation. Constructed from recycled stainless steel — including hyper-duplex steel with an isotropic lightweight structure — and manufactured using advanced machining and 3D-printing techniques, the instrument's neck and central body were milled as a single continuous piece. Guitar designer Andy Holt of Drewman Guitars, who worked on the build, noted, as reported by Branding News, "We've had to innovate from the top down. There's not a single part of this guitar that has been made before." The film format allowed Sandvik to walk audiences through this engineering process in documentary style, with a teaser preceding a longer-form reveal. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 82 out of 100, reflecting its strong creative ambition, strategic clarity, and demonstrable real-world impact across both earned media and industry recognition.
Sandvik occupies a category that rarely competes for cultural attention. The industrial and electronics technology sector in Sweden is home to engineering-led companies whose capabilities far exceed their public profile, and Sandvik is among the most technically advanced. The strategic problem Forsman & Bodenfors identified was not product weakness but perception invisibility. Sandvik's target audiences — prospective engineering talent, industrial buyers, and decision-makers across global manufacturing — are not reached through conventional consumer advertising. The agency's answer was to find a universal cultural language that could carry a highly specific technical message.
Rock music, and specifically the ritual of guitar-smashing, provided that language. Yngwie Malmsteen, the Swedish guitar virtuoso internationally recognised for his neoclassical metal style and his habit of destroying instruments on stage, served as the campaign's central figure and its most credible stress test. His involvement was not decorative. Malmsteen himself told Branding.news, "They put the work in, they did their hours, I can relate to that" — a statement that positioned Sandvik's engineers as craftspeople worthy of a craftsman's respect. This peer-to-peer credibility between maker and musician gave the campaign an authenticity that paid media alone cannot manufacture. In the Swedish market, where employer branding is a recognised discipline with its own competitive awards infrastructure, the campaign addressed a documented recruitment challenge facing engineering-led businesses. Competitors in the industrial technology space, including Atlas Copco and SKF, both Swedish multinationals with similarly low consumer profiles, have historically relied on trade publications and LinkedIn-native content to reach talent. Sandvik's decision to produce a film built around spectacle and VFX-quality production values represented a deliberate departure from that category norm, staking a claim for the kind of brand salience usually associated with consumer electronics companies.
Forsman & Bodenfors produced "The Smash-Proof Guitar" as a documentary-style film, a format chosen to make the engineering process legible and emotionally engaging for audiences with no prior knowledge of machining or materials science. The production unfolds in two movements: the construction of the guitar itself, and the climactic live performance at which Malmsteen attempts, and fails, to smash it. That structural tension — building something specifically so it cannot be destroyed — gave the film its narrative spine.
The guitar's physical construction demanded genuine innovation in manufacturing. Andy Holt of Drewman Guitars, speaking to Branding.news, confirmed that every component required original design thinking, with no existing part serving as a template. The instrument was built from recycled stainless steel incorporating hyper-duplex steel alloys, shaped using Sandvik Coromant's own cutting tools and 3D-printing processes. The neck and central body were machined from a single piece of metal — a detail that communicates precision engineering more vividly than any product specification sheet. The film's visual approach emphasised this craftsmanship, intercutting workshop sequences with performance footage in a way that drew a direct parallel between the discipline of engineering and the discipline of musicianship. Production credits for "The Smash-Proof Guitar" are not comprehensively documented in public-facing sources, though the campaign was developed by Forsman & Bodenfors in Gothenburg, with PR and media support attributed to Stone Junction, as noted in campaign documentation cited by Clapboard.com. The VFX and production values of the final film were sufficient to earn recognition specifically in the Film and Video category at the Magnet Awards, according to wechangeminds.com, suggesting the execution met a broadcast-quality standard rather than a social-native one.
ARCHIVEThe campaign generated more than 30 million viewers for the film featuring Yngwie Malmsteen's guitar destruction attempt, according to Home Sandvik. That figure, achieved through a combination of earned media, social sharing, and documentary-style storytelling, represents substantial organic reach for a business-to-business industrial brand with no prior consumer advertising history at this scale.
Industry recognition followed across two major Swedish award programmes. At the 100-Wattaren, the annual ceremony hosted by the Swedish Advertisers Association, the campaign won Gold in Employer Branding, Silver in the International category, and Bronze in the Company category, all in 2019, as reported by Clapboard.com. The jury noted that the campaign moved Sandvik "from anonymous to relevant and interesting," according to Branding.news — a formulation that captures the precise strategic shift the campaign was commissioned to achieve. At the Magnet Awards, Sweden's dedicated employer branding competition, the campaign won Gold in both the Film and Video category and the Open Class category, according to wechangeminds.com. Five awards across two respected Swedish industry programmes in a single year is a measurable indicator of creative and strategic quality. The campaign also generated hundreds of articles of press coverage, as noted by home.sandvik, amplifying its reach well beyond the paid media footprint. Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on its ability to make an industrial capability — precision metal machining — emotionally memorable through a culturally fluent challenge. By choosing a protagonist whose audience already valued craftsmanship and technical mastery, Sandvik ensured that the brand message arrived with pre-existing credibility. The Clapboard Score of 82 out of 100 reflects this alignment of creative ambition, production quality, strategic purpose, and verified real-world performance.
"The Smash-Proof Guitar" is a 2019 film campaign created by Forsman & Bodenfors for Sandvik in Sweden. Sandvik engineered a fully metal, 3D-printed guitar and challenged Yngwie Malmsteen to destroy it on stage, using the stunt to demonstrate the company's advanced machining and materials science capabilities to global audiences and prospective engineering talent.
The guitar was built by Andy Holt of Drewman Guitars in collaboration with Sandvik Coromant's engineering team. Holt confirmed to Branding.news that every component required original design, with no existing part used as a template. Materials included recycled stainless steel with hyper-duplex alloys, machined using Sandvik Coromant's own cutting tools and 3D-printing processes.
More than 30 million people watched the film featuring Yngwie Malmsteen's attempt to destroy the all-metal guitar, according to home.sandvik. The campaign also generated hundreds of press articles, according to home.sandvik, extending its reach significantly beyond the core viewership figure through earned media coverage across international outlets.
The campaign won five awards across two Swedish programmes in 2019. At the 100-Wattaren, hosted by the Swedish Advertisers Association, it took Gold in Employer Branding, Silver in International, and Bronze in Company, as reported by Clapboard.com. At the Magnet Awards it won Gold in Film and Video and Gold in Open Class, according to wechangeminds.com.
Yngwie Malmsteen is a Swedish guitar virtuoso internationally known for smashing instruments on stage, making him the most credible possible stress test for a smash-proof guitar. His comment to Branding.news — that Sandvik's engineers "put the work in" — framed the brand as a fellow practitioner of demanding craft, lending authenticity that paid endorsement alone cannot replicate.
Sandvik aimed to move from industrial anonymity to cultural relevance, particularly among prospective engineering talent in Sweden and internationally. As Klas Forsström, President of Sandvik Machining Solutions, told PR Newswire at launch, most people are unaware of how advanced Sandvik's methods are. The campaign used film and spectacle to make precision manufacturing emotionally memorable and shareable at scale.
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