Whilst most people can understand the sponsorship of the Volvo China Open by the cars side of the Volvo brand, less is known about how the heavy automotive aspect of Volvo can – and do – benefit from the sponsorship of China’s national open golf championship.
Being primarily a retail customer-facing brand, Volvo Cars, with its award-winning fleet of safe, high-quality and environmentally-friendly cars is ideally placed to leverage added brand value and marketing opportunities on the back of its sports sponsorship portfolio, which includes the Volvo Ocean Race, the Volvo World Match Play Championship and the Volvo China Open.
But the same is true for the other side of the Volvo brand, the heavy automotive products such as Volvo Trucks, Volvo Buses and Volvo Construction Equipment, but for different reasons.“It is quite unique how two different companies, Volvo Cars and Volvo Group not only share the same core values – Safety, Quality and Environmental Care – but also jointly promote the brand and those values through shared sponsorship activity coordinated through Volvo Event Management (Golf)” explains Klas Magniusson, Senior Vice President, adding, “As a business-to-business brand, Volvo Group can build and strengthen customer and client relationships through golf.
“Volvo has been in China for a very long time and through golf, we have supported the development of the businesses and the game of golf in parallel,” he says, concluding, “When we analyse the business forecasts and the golf predictions going forward, China is a key market for Volvo Group, so the relationship between golf and Volvo will only strengthen.”
Fast Facts: Predictions of growth in golf in China are truly remarkable, with plans for 1,500 public golf courses to be built between now and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio in 2016, when golf will be readmitted, with suggestions that China could have as many as 20million regular golfers by 2025.
China recently reported economic growth of almost 12% per annum and is now officially the second largest economy in the world.
2010-04-18
