Volvo Rocks The World - Volvo's sponsorship of CNN's World Beat - Brief Article

Brandweek, April 2, 2001 by Michael Depp

The auto manufacturer reinvents itself with CNN and World Beat

When most consumers think of Volvo, an image of boxy design and upscale, reliable safety-consciousness comes to mind. So when Volvo began redesigning its cars and its image in the late '90s, the company needed a way to globally reintroduce itself to the public. Enter CNN International and a new worldwide music program, World Beat, and suddenly, this is not your parents' Volvo anymore.

In a three-year, multimillion-dollar deal with CNN launched in June 1998, Volvo became the presenting sponsor of CNN International's World Beat, a half-hour, music-oriented weekly reaching viewers of CNN's domestic channel as well as CNN International in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the CNN Airport Network in the U.S. In addition, Volvo became the exclusive partner and the sole car advertiser for the shows online version at CNN.com.

"For Volvo, it was a question of trying to approach a slightly younger target group with some different values than the traditional Volvo values," says Jorgen Krabbe, media/strategy director at SCP, Volvo's Sweden-based ad agency. Shooting for a target demographic of younger, hipper 25-to-40 year-olds with Volvo's new S80's, V70's and S60's, the company saw a unique opportunity with CNN's emerging feature-entertainment programming.

"CNN domestically and internationally reaches the upscale business traveler and high-income, well-educated households, and Volvo was looking to target that audience for their cars," says David Levy, co-president of Turner International. "They were also looking to get out a message quickly and to a broad, worldwide audience that they were changing the look and feel of the Volvo car and brand." A print component with AOL Time Warner-owned Time magazine was also a part of the package.

World Beat, which reaches some 213 million households worldwide, features music news and information from around the globe, covering a range of stories and artists from rock, pop, jazz, world music, classical and fusion. Regular features include artist interviews and profiles, "Global Gig Guide" and "World Top Ten Albums," Which charts best-selling records.

For Krabbe, World Beat, which Volvo has sponsored since its inception, was ultimately developed as a team effort between the auto manufacturer and CNN. "It was a joint activity for CNN and Volvo to try to build a new image more or less for both parties," he says. "The idea behind this was more or less a collaboration between two strong brands, CNN and Volvo, who sat down and discussed what we could do together."

Levy says the kind of integrated campaign CNN could offer matched Volvo's need for a widespread audience. "They liked the idea that CNN reaches a large audience on a worldwide basis, not just from television but also at the airports, where this was also programmed, as well as the Web site section under CNN.com," he says.

For Volvo, the Web component to the sponsorship was also an important one. "That's quite significant because we always try to do campaigns where you are using the dotcom as well to promote the activity," Krabbe says. "With the dot-com, you can also create links directly to the Volvo Web site, so we see that as a very important tool."

Levy says the site's popularity has been beneficial to Volvo. "It enhances the television product," he says. "It gives you much more detail on a lot of things, and for that particular genre, it is one of the top sites as far as hits." Krabbe notes the site has driven traffic to Volvo's own site. "We can see that the number of clicks has increased dramatically," he says.

Within the show's content, meanwhile, the marketing theme is "In Tune With Volvo," which opens and closes the program in spots in which musicians performing are seen in the rearview mirror of a car driving down the highway. The theme appears again in program- break bumpers and spot advertising, with Volvo-branded vignettes running on the CNN Airport Network to extend the program reach.

As the first commercial in every break, Volvo's creative has an internationally minded flavor consistent with the World Beat feel. In a recent spot for the Volvo Cross Country (the S.U.V. version of the V70), for example, a young couple speed across the snow-glazed countryside, momentarily delayed by a thundering stampede of reindeer. When the couple share a brief exchange at the end of the spot, it is in Swedish (with subtitles).

So far, Volvo is happy with response to the spots and the sponsorship, which represents a substantial amount of its international cable buy, though not the whole pie, according to Krabbe. "We have an activity regularly going on with Eurosport because that's more to follow up [Volvo's] engagements in different sponsorships like mountain biking and sailing," he explains.

And though it usually takes time to attract viewers to a new program, Volvo is encouraged with the profile it has gotten through the show. "We can see that among CNN viewers, the World Beat viewership is increasing, as well as the awareness that Volvo is the sponsor of it," Krabbe says.