The little-known, but awful, story of Volvo’s attempt at a brand update.

In 2012, industry gossip that Volvo was migrating their branding towards a more gender-neutral position was welcomed. Given that most men believe that being seen behind the wheel of a Volvo is a kind of public shaming, we can assume that most Volvo drivers must be women. Few can understand how Sweden’s sole surviving carmaker had come that far without being handbagged senseless for its blatant male-oriented branding. But attempts to appease the #metoo movement went badly wrong.

Jens Guntersstrom, head of branding for Volvo, said ‘The long-established Volvo symbol wasn’t anything to do with masculinity or male dominance. It’s the ancient sign for Mars, the god of war, a heroic protector, a figure of overwhelming strength, who impugns weakness. We strenuously deny any associations with manliness or any kind of sexism.’ Guntersstrom did admit, however, that the male gender indicator adopted by the company as its brand symbol could be seen by some (mostly men) to attach Volvo’s long tradition of safety and passenger protection to rugged masculinity. But that was incidental, he maintains.

Aware that equality campaigners were loading social media with increasingly negative comment on the company’s established symbol, Volvo opted for change. The car-maker tasked the Stockholm office of design house Centoptica  with a ‘symbol refresh that would de-gender the historic branding, reinforcing the company’s global social awareness, and raising its acceptability threshold.’  With a 5 million SK budget Centoptica (whose other clients include H&M, Swedish Tourism Authority, Ericsson and ABB) worked through hundreds of iterations of the new design, some evolutionary, some radical.

Ola Skarsgard, Volvo account director at the design house said ‘We spent a lot of time working with a hybrid of the two gender indicators. It was a way of appealing to both genders through an unbiased visual. But it just kept looking like an apple with an arrow through it. Great for a Swiss arms manufacturer maybe, but it didn’t say ‘progressive Sweden’ or ‘you’re in safe hands’ or  ‘this brand is yours’ enough.'

Before Centoptica could reach the finish line with anything half woke-enough, the problem was solved (or created), by the daughter of a Volvo employee. Studying art at school, she’d come up with a solution that was so liked by her father, Valter Holmberg, Volvo’s Vice President (Marketing), RAD was tasked with implementing it.

‘We should have run some focus groups first. But the Board just loved it. They trusted their gut, and before you knew it, cars were coming off the line with the new branding,’ said Skarsgard. An instant hit? Maybe not...

‘The first we knew of any problems was when the newly-branded cars hit the showrooms.  People felt it was even more masculine, even more male-dominant than before. Somehow it looked less like the Volvo symbol, and more like a penis.’

Guntersstrom said ‘We hadn’t realised the upset it would cause. We didn’t want to change the arrow for a cross, That would make Volvo look like a brand for women. And that would upset people of both, I mean, every, gender.’  He explained, ‘Taking the point off the arrow just meant you could attach any gender identity you wished. It seemed like a great idea to us.’

Leading Swedish feminist Gudrun Schyman said ‘ I couldn't believe they did that. It was bad enough already. Then they changed it into a picture of a dick. What were they thinking?’

One Volvo dealer’s flagship showroom in Gotheburg was overrun by a  feminist group, who screwdrivered the badges off all the radiator grilles and steering wheels. In Trelleborg, a womens’ equality group launched a billboard campaign featuring the new symbol, with the headline ‘Upp din, Volvo – inte min.’ ( ‘Up Yours, Volvo, not mine.’). In Stockholm, Ulla Lindstrom, Minister for Gender Equality, made a statement in parliament decrying Volvo for ‘a giant leap backwards for equality,’ and called for the Swedish Stock Exchange to suspend trading in the company’s shares.

Within days, the old branding was reintroduced. Hundreds of thousands of product brochures were pulped, hundreds of 800-page corporate identity manuals were hastily withdrawn, and a planned 12-month brand identity migration programme was scrapped just days before inception. Estimates of the cost of the cancelled programme run as high as 200 million SK. It was the shortest identity-refresh in marketing history. Buried swiftly and buried deep, the project leaves two lessons. Always test, and never hire the marketing director’s daughter.

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