Volvo Ocean Race: Overview, Marketing, History

those intended for the SEB brand. These were excitement, endurance,
professionalism, modern technology and teamwork.
• Profile: The race has significant global profile as one of the world’s top
premier sports but, most importantly, was well known in SEB’s key markets.
The media profile provided the means of delivering SEB’s brand message
effectively to an engaged and interested audience.
• Internal engagement: As a truly global event with an 8-9 month duration and
18-24 month build up, the race offered an excellent opportunity to engage
with employees across all areas of the business and encourage involvement
not simply through the intranet but also physically in events organised
around the stop-overs.
• Client entertainment: There are a number of opportunities for unique,
‘money-can’t-buy’ client entertainment opportunities ranging from sailing
days in the run up to and following the event and events created around the
8 or so stopovers in the ports around the world.
• Return on Investment: SEB had canvassed previous sponsors of the race and
conducted research that demonstrated that they should expect returns of
between 200-300% on investment in terms of media exposure alone.
STRATEGY
SEB established Team SEB. The sailing team was allocated USD12 million over
three years that represented their part of the cost of the boat and its crew. SEB
allocated a further USD9 million to support value added commercial activities
around the event.
SEB decided to let the dramatic nature of the sport feed into and transform
their brand identity. Working with a creative agency, they used highly distinctive
green branding for the yacht and created an imaginary ‘green thread’ that
represented the values of their team in the Volvo Ocean Race. This “green
thread” flowed through all of their marketing, internal engagement and
customer activities to create a consistent image.
Using teams with well-defined areas of responsibility, SEB put together a
commercial activity programme of impressive logistical complexity to support
the event. The strategy proved prescient, as SEB suffered two major setbacks
during the race, rudder failure and a dismasting, which wrecked any chances of
the yacht winning the race. But SEB was able to continue with its programme
OSKAR KIHLBORG, RICK TOMLINSON
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