By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 5, 2006

ARRRR!

There be pirates about!

Walt Disney Co.'s "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" hits theaters on Friday during a hail of marketing tie-ins pelting consumers like grapeshot.

Volvo, Kodak, McDonald's, Kellogg's, Visa, Gibson guitars, MySpace, Verizon, MSN Messenger, Valpak, M&M candies and, naturally, the Bahamas tourist board have all latched on to the sequel to the surprise 2003 blockbuster, "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

When it was announced that Disney would make the first "Pirates" movie, plenty scoffed: A movie based on an amusement park ride? Talk about running out of ideas.

The laughter abruptly stopped after the movie grossed $47 million in its opening weekend and ended up with $653 million in worldwide revenue. Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow was a strange and likable character, a sort of fey Keith Richards in pirate garb (essentially, indistinguishable from Keith Richards garb), good enough to receive an Oscar nod.

This time, the corporate sponsors couldn't board fast enough.

Part of the appeal speaks to the popularity of the film franchise. But another part speaks to the enduring appeal of the pirate, or at least the storybook notion of a buccaneer. From the "Pirates of Penzance" to Long John Silver's, pirates have been a reliable draw for decades.

And, like barnacles to the hull of a frigate, others have latched on to the "Pirates" launch, though they are not official sponsors or partners. The History Channel's "True Caribbean Pirates" airs two days after the movie opens, and Legoland, a California amusement park, last month opened its Pirate Shores ride.

Oren Aviv, vice president of marketing for Disney Studios, said he doesn't mind the hangers-on. "It only confirms, at least in my mind, that we have something really amazing here," he said. "We had a number of sponsors last time, but not as much stuff going on as this time." Aviv said he turned down a couple of potential sponsors because either they didn't bring enough cash and clout to the table or their brands didn't match up well with "Pirates."

Depp's Sparrow is the kind of a pirate that makes kids don eye patches at Halloween and grown men walk around the office growling, "Arrrr!" Sparrow is a thief, but he is a clever scoundrel, a rapscallion, more likely to do harm to his standing in the pirate community than to an enemy. He is a thumbed nose in the face of British colonial authority, i.e., he sticks it to ye olde man. Sparrow's is an image advertisers love because they know that many of their customers imagine those traits in themselves.

And, for some reason, people (especially guys) can't seem to get enough of pirates. Witness the 20,000 views of a throwaway "Saturday Night Live" skit on YouTube that featured a pirate convention whose keynote speaker was actor Peter Sarsgaard, just because the pirates liked saying his name. ("Sarrrs-gaarrrrd!") There are an annual Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19)]; a Web site that generates a pirate name for you; and PirateMod, a Web site that sells "alternative fashion with a piratical attitude."

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.