Designed Around You - the New Volvo Brand Strategy

Beijing was the place where the Volvo Car Corporation chose to debut its new global brand strategy today, while presenting the progress of the China Growth Strategy including a sales improvement of 36 per cent for the first half of 2011.

Dubbed "Designed Around You", the new brand strategy is part of the company’s global revitalization plan, and places the human factor at the center of Volvo's future brand development.

"It summarizes our approach to understanding people, giving them a luxury experience that is a little more human-oriented - while at the same time linking firmly to our heritage of building safe and dependable cars," said Richard Monturo, Vice President Global Marketing at Volvo Car Corporation. "We are the most human-centric car brand in the industry. And we need to communicate that to our customers."

The new brand direction will be further demonstrated at the Frankfurt Motorshow in mid-September.

Volvo Car China also celebrated the opening of a new representation office in Beijing to strengthen its presence in the Chinese capital.

The introduction of the S60 sedan and other model year 2012 variants has won positive feedback from the market and sales volume in China surged by 36% to 21,000 units in the first six months of 2011 compared to the same period the previous year. For the first half of 2011, the XC60 crossover was the best selling Volvo model in China, followed by the S80L and the S60 sedans.

The sales network in China is expanding systematically, now totaling 117 dealerships nationwide. Further, the Chengdu plant construction has been kicked off and investigations are ongoing for a potential second plant.