Volvo & Pirate's of the Carribean

Probably the dumbest promotional move of 2006....and that is saying something.

On paper, at least, the latest activity for Volvo's SUV, the XC90, looks good. Its agency Euro RSCG has created an integrated campaign featuring TV ads, PR, internet, viral and the all-important integration with a summer movie.

The trouble with the XC90 campaign is the movie Volvo has selected. I'm not sure about you, but if I was to promote a state-of-the-art SUV then Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest would probably not be at the top of my list. For a start, it is set 200 years in the past. Then there is the small problem that most of the movie takes place at sea.

I would love to have sat in on the blue-sky meeting in which the Volvo marketing team came up with the idea of promoting a 21st century SUV with an 18th century nautical swashbuckler.

I can imagine the room. Four people are sitting across from each other studying the latest plans for the XC90. On the flip chart there is a single question: what's the big idea for the Volvo XC90?

The clock is ticking. Suddenly, one of the marketers rises from her seat with a look of triumph. She smiles at the rest of her team and says just one word: 'Pirates'. High fives from everyone.

Even the most creative brand integration artist at Disney is going to struggle to work the car into the movie in these circumstances. But this is not really a problem for Disney. All it wants from Volvo is some money and free publicity ahead of the launch of its film on 7 July.

The problem comes when the Volvo team tries to weave pirates seamlessly into its campaign for the XC90. According to Anne Belec, president and chief executive of Volvo in the US, 'We have taken our most treasured vehicle, the Volvo XC90 V8 SUV, and married it to the pirate world. It is the centrepiece of an elaborate campaign that we hope will not only garner widespread participation from everyone who loves to search for buried treasure, but also have the public at large think about Volvo in an entirely different way.'

One of the most tragic things about a bad concept is that it spawns increasingly inane and bizarre executions from that point on. For example, Volvo has created a special one-off pirate-themed Volvo XC90 featuring black leather seats and custom painted 20-inch wheels (both essential gear for most pirates).

Even better, Volvo has, wait for it, dug a big hole in the ground at a mystery location and buried the car there.

One lucky customer can win this pirate-themed Volvo by responding to various clues that will appear on the internet over the next four weeks.

At this point in the campaign, Volvo is showing a TV ad in which its brand-new SUV is locked in a box and buried in the ground.

Meanwhile, Volvo marketers are trying to stoke up media interest in the contest with a series of increasingly desperate press releases.

'People are asking, "where in the world did you bury that Volvo?"' said Volvo spokesperson Helen Gore. 'Can't tell you that, but here are a few places we considered burying it but, for one reason or the other, just found it unfeasible.'

One of the biggest myths in marketing is that there is no such thing as a bad idea. Bollocks. There is almost nothing worse than a bad idea.

Just ask Volvo - it has had about 12 in the past few weeks and it still has another month to go before this horrendously misjudged campaign comes to a close.

30 SECONDS ON ... PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, due for release in the UK on 6 July, is a follow-up to the 2003 summer blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

- Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley return to their roles as Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann respectively.

- Filming began in February 2005, using locations in Mexico, Dominica and The Bahamas. It finished in February of this year.

- The movie premiered at Disneyland California on 24 June, two days before the re-opening of the refurbished Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.

- Global piracy increased slightly in the first quarter of 2006, according to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre. Reported attacks have risen by about 8% since 2005. The number of reported piracy attacks in the first three months of 2006 was 61, up from the 56 attacks recorded for the same period of the previous year.

Brand Inconsistency

Google & British Airways - apparently very strong brands.

Apparently.

The British Airways pilot sounded calm, but he urgently needed a decision. Shortly after taking off from LAX one of the four engines on his Boeing 747, had exploded. With 5000 miles to fly and 351 passengers on board, should he return to Los Angeles or continue the flight to Heathrow?

Senior BA managers on the ground faced a crossroads. If they considered BA's brand values, the direction was clear: the airline that defined itself as 'reliable' and 'reassuring' would obviously advise the pilot to turn the plane around and head back to LA. But if the management team started to look at the financial implications, the decision became more difficult.

Turning the plane around would cost the airline upward of £100,000 in reimbursement costs. Should they take the brand path or the profit path?

At 29,000ft somewhere over Northern California the pilot's radio crackled into life and his orders were conveyed. Continue on to London. The pilot was probably not surprised. In 15 engine failures since 2001, BA had made the same decision. For all the fine identity work, advertising and PR, when a pile of money is put on the table, brand values cease to be relevant.

Business comes before brand - economics before equity.

An even bigger brand has been facing an even bigger crossroads this year, and last week we learned that it may regret the path that it has taken.

In late 2000, Google engineers created a clunky but effective Chinese version of its main portal that quickly became as important a part of life for millions of Chinese people as it had for the rest of us. Then, in 2002, the portal vanished. The Chinese government had begun blocking it using what has become known as 'The Great Firewall of China'.

With Google's performance severely restricted in China and a local search engine, Baidu, rapidly emerging as the market leader, Google faced an enormously difficult choice. It could acquiesce to the Chinese government and develop a nation-specific site that enforced the authorities' censorship policy. Or it could remain true to the brand's much-heralded commitment to the freedom of information and stay out of the world's biggest market for search.

The contrast between brand and business opportunity could not be more stark. Everything in Google's brand identity screams non-co-operation with the Chinese government. Google's bold, if informal, company motto is 'Don't be evil'. Its self-declared mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible'. Its philosophy of 10 unbreakable rules is equally unequivocal: with points such as 'focus on the user', 'democracy on the web works' and 'the need for information crosses all borders', the correct path for Google was clear.

Yet, in January this year, Google took the money. Directly contradicting everything it stands for, Google.cn was launched, with the new portal actively censoring any and all content the Chinese government deemed inappropriate for its citizens.

Last week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed that he may be having second thoughts about its sell-out. 'Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense,' he told journalists. So is this a glint of brand integrity?

Perhaps.

More likely, Brin is increasingly aware that Google.cn is being soundly thrashed by Baidu, the clear market leader for search in China. By considering withdrawing its self-censored site, Google appears to be returning to the crossroads and, this time, making a brand-consistent decision. In reality, Google is making another business move, and the brand, as usual, has nothing to do with it.

Beware the Lure of Discount Retailers like TK Maxx

Emma Smith (not her real name) is the UK marketing manager for a well-known perfume brand. The brand has been on the market for eight years - an eternity in the fast-moving, constantly changing world of fragrances.

Each year it becomes harder for Emma to reach the aggressive sales targets that her US bosses set her. In fact, she is struggling even to maintain the existing retail distribution and sales levels, let alone grow them.

Many of her key accounts are giving the brand much less prominence in store and some are even threatening to delist it because of slowing sales.

So when the merchandising team from TK Maxx called her earlier this year, she was intrigued. The senior buyer came straight to the point. He knew she had excess perfume in stock and he wanted all of it, immediately.

If they could agree on a price, he could arrange for an anonymous logistics team to collect the inventory the next day. All of Emma's sales problems for the year would be solved.

She was amazed, but also a little concerned about the idea of her prestige perfume appearing in a discount store. The buyer reassured her. He listed all the major brands, some extremely prestigious, that supply TK Maxx.

He even offered to ensure that Emma's perfume was not offered at any TK Maxx locations that she felt were too sensitive or likely to cause problems with her other retailers.

TK Maxx is the British affiliate of the US company TJX, which runs a global network of 'off-price' stores. Their appeal could not be simpler: customers are offered well-known brands with 20%-60% off their original price.

TK Maxx is able to do this thanks to its core competence: opportunistic buying systems. Unlike other department stores that commit to quarterly buying cycles, the merchandising teams at TK Maxx wait until suppliers and retailers have committed to their orders and then plunder both parties for excess, discounted and unwanted stock. Sometimes a store has ordered too much and TK Maxx buys the excess from them at a discount. Sometimes a supplier makes 100,000 items but can only sell 75,000.

Whatever the reason, the buyers at TK Maxx are constantly searching for famous brands at lower prices, and these items constantly flow into its stores on high streets across the UK.

So what should Emma do? In the short term, TK Maxx offers an answer to all her sales woes. While the retailer will expect a generous discount, the sale will still prove highly profitable. Emma will make her sales targets for the year and all will be well.

But in the long term, supplying a retailer such as TK Maxx is potential brand suicide. The discounter will invariably offer the perfume at a steep promotional rate and will certainly not present the brand in a manner consistent with its positioning.

Brand equity will be damaged. Just seeing the brand in a TK Maxx store is enough to harm many customers' perceptions of the brand, let alone when they discover the heavily discounted price.

Sales of the perfume would flourish in TK Maxx, but the combined effect of reduced brand equity and cannibalisation of sales at other retailers mean that Emma's original, brand-consistent retail base would begin to erode.

A year after supplying TK Maxx, Emma would find herself in a perilous, but familiar, situation. Her brand has lost much of its lustre and many of the prestige retailers are no longer interested in listing it. This time the call from TK Maxx is not intriguing, it is a lifeline. But the call never comes. The discounter's opportunistic buying approach means that TK Maxx has moved on; there are stronger, fresher brands out there.

30 SECONDS ON... TK MAXX

- The first TK Maxx opened in Bristol in 1994 and there are now 197 stores in the UK and Ireland. The retailer recorded profits of $69.2m (£36.8m) for the year ending 28 January 2006.

- TK Maxx's parent company TJX is a $16bn