The Buccaneer's Brand

Which is a bit odd, because it's hard to imagine a popular advertising symbol that has such a disconnect from its real-world roots as the pirate. It's as if Attila the Hun had undergone a Madison Avenue makeover, or if a soda company unveiled a New Pol Pot, the huggable huckster. Most old-time pirates were a foul, murderous lot, with pillaging practices and personal hygiene habits that would have shamed the Visigoths.

On the other hand, their outside-the-box thinking was often valued by the establishment, which had a more acceptable name for them -- privateers.

"When historians try to put pirates into context, it only raises more questions about who was a real pirate," Frank Lambert, a history professor and pirate expert at (landlocked) Purdue University, wrote in an e-mail, citing British naval hero and one-time pirate Sir Francis Drake. "You might say a pirate is in the eye of the beholder." Or, perhaps, the aye of the beholder.

There's a lot less to like about modern pirates.

Whether they're firing rocket-propelled grenades at cruise ships off the coast of Somalia or holding Filipino seamen hostage, today's pirates are seaborne gangsters and thugs, not loveable old salts with chatty parrots on their shoulders.

When it comes to the conflicted pirate image, consumers and advertisers effectively have divorced reality from fantasy, said Peter Arnell, an expert on branding.

"They are filled with a balance between charm and danger," he said by phone from Los Angeles, where, just the day before, he had walked by a bookstore window bedecked with books about pirates. "They fly against the rules, they live on the open sea and do what they want."

Another branding expert, Steve Addis, agrees.

"They have been romanticized beyond just thieves," he said. "They project a maverick personality, a free-spirited independent personality. It's an easy way [for a brand] to say, 'I'm not a conformist.' It's shorthand."

As Captain Morgan rum commercials asked viewers, "Got a little captain in you?"

But it does bring up an obvious question: What, exactly, about safety-first, airbag-stuffed Volvos screams "maverick"? Volvos are known for seat buckle, not swashbuckle.

The Volvo connection with the new "Pirates" movie actually grew out of the company's annual around-the-world yacht race that recently concluded. Volvo was seeking an American sponsor for one of the boats, to increase the race's profile in the United States.

The company approached Disney last year, which saw an opportunity to promote the "Pirates" sequel. The company festooned the sails of a 70-foot monohull racing yacht with images and words from the movie, and a circumnavigating promotional vehicle was christened. Though it should be noted that most of the race's 32,700 open-ocean miles were spent promoting the movie to curious marine life.

Volvo's auto division wondered how it could get a piece o' the "Pirates" plunder.

"We couldn't have product placement in this film," said Roger Ormisher, vice president of public affairs for Volvo North America. "It's kind of tough to get an XC90 [SUV] into the movie," which is set in the 1720s.

So the automaker concocted a consumer treasure hunt that involves obtaining a treasure map at a Volvo dealer and answering e-mail puzzles that lead to the whereabouts of a buried $82,000 Volvo XC90. Two weeks into the promotion, more than 34,000 people have picked up maps at Volvo dealers, Ormisher said.

"And they probably wouldn't have walked into our retailers" without the contest, he said.

As for the unlikely marriage of Volvo and pirates, Ormisher pointed out that hordes of Vikings -- perhaps the first pirates -- marauded their way out of Sweden, home of Volvo.