Volvo Ocean Race: Overview, Marketing, History

58 CASE STUDIES
to supervise the integration into the larger Group.
CORPORATE IDENTITY
Employees, naturally enough, identify with their company – its heritage,
traditions and values. Acquisitions require that the parent company faces the
challenge of educating its new employees as to its own values, work ethics and
identity in order to create feelings of pride and loyalty in the new, expanded
company. Assa Abloy was faced with this challenge, exacerbated by the fact
that it needed to work with 100 companies in over 40 countries around the
world.
BRANDING
As a holding company and not a consumer brand in itself, Assa Abloy had not
invested in building brand awareness. The company acquired many companies
whose various local trademarks were well known in their respective markets
where Assa Abloy was largely unknown. The company decided that they would
use the Volvo Ocean Race as a means to generate awareness of the Assa Abloy
brand amongst customers and distributors and also to encourage employee
pride in the Group.
ASSA ABLOY’S OBJECTIVES
• Assa Abloy assessed its objectives in percentage terms:
• 60% of objective was as an integration exercise around a strong corporate
identity
• 30% was to build relationships with primary customers and distributors
• 10% was as a brand awareness exercise
WHY THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE?
Magnus Olsson, one of the world’s best-known sailors who made his name with
the Volvo Ocean Race and its predecessor The Whitbread Round the World
Race, had made a presentation to Assa Abloy some years before. When the
company was asking itself how to address the challenges it faced, their
recollection of this presentation led them to approach him again. The race
was chosen because:
PERFECT GEOGRAPHICAL MATCH
There was a near perfect geographical match between the course of the Volvo
Ocean Race and the new companies in the Assa Abloy Group. Their companies