In this race our approach has been overall

Around sumptuous buffets, nearly six hundred bankers to press under the ors of the magnificent ceiling box-girder of a Wall Street restaurant. Twenty men at the gold mine, and part hair decide in their white shirts, with ambient austerity. The first came to draw a breath of air from the sea to the latter, by means of ABN AMRO, the second Dutch Bank which organizes is one of sixteen professional meetings around the stopover of the Volvo Ocean Race.

The race around the world to the sailing crew petitioned rescue hot which is is spot in November 2005, departure from Bilbao (Spain), Göteborg (Sweden) at the end of June 2006, he had indeed served frame its relational campaign of past 12 months. Between two small ovens and a speech to the accents of adventure, a few professional exchanges cannot harm...

The management of the banking group was seeking an event of interest to both Dutch and international clients its 100,000 employees, to ensure media coverage important to strengthen its image and enjoy visits to the United States and the Brazil for bringing his green and yellow logo to the acquisitions of institutions Lasalle and Banco Real.

On the theme "a Bank, a team, one goal", the institution has committed two vessels in this race keeps, since its creation in 1973 under the name of Whitbread Race, an aura of adventure to generate admiration of earthlings, and therefore clients and employees. The first, led by a professional crew, was set to win. Under the direction of the New Zealander Mike Sanderson, the contract was completed. "abn amro 1" won more than half of the victories of step and allowed the Bank to build a competent, professional, conquering and victorious image.

This adventure is desired a reflection of his ability to work as a team, in a highly competitive world, because this race became the test off the coast and in the most difficult crew for browsers. The Volvo also appealed to the high-tech, allowing corporations which sponsor a boat to the parallel between their abilities to manage potential and the contingencies of modernity and those of their crews to take advantage of innovative materials, the latest communication technologies, research in design.

The ability to be joint and several

"abn amro 2" and his young crew mission was to demonstrate the concern of Bank's youth, its leadership role and training for the younger generations. For age below 30 years of its staff, the experience was an example of determination, dynamism, commitment to itself.

This international crew also demonstrated its ability to be solidarity in a hostile, enterprising, audacious, environment among the values of youth and dynamism which have thus brought this institution of traditional Dutch banking world. Indeed, the twenty thousand people from welcoming the vessel upon arrival in Rotterdam, the penultimate step of the Tower of the world, were there to testify that ABN AMRO has passed its operation "beyond of all expectations", says Jan Berent Heukensfeldt, the Director of the project. The public also came to support this young crew coming to live a double tragedy. During the stage between New York and Portsmouth, a wave kept, in a snowstorm, a businessmen crew, paradoxically the most seasoned alongside skipper Sébastien Josse. The professionalism and the determination of the latter enabled him to recover the body, but too late, so that it can be revived. This sea misfortune was followed three days later, a distress call from another competitor, the Spanish Movistar, victim of a waterway. "ABN AMRO 2", which had resumed its course, turned and regained in full depression, the ten sailors on the VOR 70 that eventually sink.

Winner sports plan and brave heroes of a double dramatic epic, the Team literally embodied the slogan chosen by the Bank for this campaign: "Making more possible", which could be translated as: "do even more that what is possible." It is extremely rare to get a man spent overboard in the storm and it is not an example, in maritime history that this feat is doubled the rescue of ten other browsers.

Jan Berent Heukensfeldt had followed a special training before the race, to manage the communication around this kind of drama that "Unfortunately we could not exclude", said. "Our investment of $ 20 million for its nautical part is translated by a return on investment three times higher in terms of media coverage."

200 million viewers

According to the organizers of the Volvo, some 200 million viewers saw at least a flash in the eight months of the race and the website registered almost 40,000 clicks per day. "In this race, our approach has been overall." "This has nothing to do with our sponsorship of the Ajax of Amsterdam or the tennis tournaments that bears our name", said the representative of ABN AMRO. "Football, this is purely local." We invite every 200 professional relations, the Dutch for the most part. "Need us about three seasons of Ajax to contact as many customers as on a Volvo". Jan Berent Heukensfeldt does not hide his satisfaction of having completed this project and hope that the establishment is prepared to renew the experience, in the next Volvo announced for 2009, from Valencia (Spain).