Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

'Pirates' promo snares Odyssey

Secret work on the movie tie-in escalated its dispute with Spain.

By SCOTT BARANCIK
Published June 26, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Special to the Times] Odyssey Marine hasn't been able to retrieve this chest holding $50,000 in coins for a contest winner because of a dispute with Spain.

When Volvo decided to bury the grand prize for its online treasure hunt at sea, it asked Odyssey Marine Exploration for help.

Odyssey was up to the task. The publicly traded Tampa company makes its living searching the world's oceans for shipwrecked treasure. Like Volvo, it already had a promotional deal with Disney to promote the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which debuted in theaters last month.

Odyssey stuffed a treasure chest with $50,000 in gold coins, added the keys to a Volvo XC90 and then sank it somewhere in the western Mediterranean.

But plans for a triumphant return to the burial site last week never materialized. Thanks to a recent row with Spain over a shipwreck code-named "Black Swan, " Odyssey's ships could be seized if they leave Gibraltar's port. On Friday, Volvo said it would go ahead and cut the winner a $50,000 check.

"Odyssey's been trying to find ways to get our treasure out of the bottom of the ocean," said Linda Gangeri, Volvo's U.S. advertising manager. "But they're at a stalemate right now."

Volvo's The Hunt contest drew roughly 50,000 contestants from around the world last month. The winner, a 23-year-old Russian woman, solved a series of 22 puzzles that appeared over several weeks. In addition to the $50,000 in "doubloons" -- South African Krugerrands, actually, according to the contest's fine print - she would receive up to $37,500 to compensate for taxes, a silver metallic Volvo worth $45,000 and a two-day trip on Odyssey's ship to retrieve the chest.

Under a nondisclosure agreement Odyssey signed, its role was to remain a secret until the very end of the contest. A shrewd contestant might track its ships' movements and figure out the treasure's location.

In an unrelated development, Odyssey announced in mid May that it had found 500,000 silver coins aboard a 17th-century merchant ship that wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean. An avalanche of global media attention boosted Odyssey's stock price by 80 percent in one day. It also made Volvo and Disney look very, very smart. But before long, the Black Swan's discovery would plague Volvo's contest, and vice-versa.

For months, Spanish authorities -- already suspicious of Odyssey due to battles over another shipwreck -- had been tracking Odyssey's ships near Gibraltar. When Odyssey announced its Black Swan find, Spanish officials believed it might have gotten the coins not from the Atlantic but a Spanish warship, the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, that sank near Gibraltar.

Odyssey officials wanted to tell the world that it was all a big misunderstanding -- that its unexplained activity near Gibraltar was part of the Volvo operation; Volvo told Spanish authorities as much in an affidavit.

But Odyssey's nondisclosure clause forced it to stay quiet. When Volvo finally disclosed the arrangement Friday, it said it hoped the information would help end Odyssey's battle with Spain.

"Without a real explanation of why we had deep-sea exploration equipment out there, it's easy to see how imaginations could run wild," Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm said in a statement. The damage to its stock price has been very real. Odyssey's stock fell 6 percent Monday to close at $5.75 per share and is down 31 percent since the day after it announced the Black Swan find.

Gangeri said Volvo hasn't given up on getting Odyssey to recover the treasure chest. The company wants to fulfill its pledge to the contest winner. Besides, such promotions help counter the carmaker's "stodgy" image.

"The reason we went with Odyssey was we wanted an authentic experience," she said. "And boy, we got it."

Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or 727 893-8751.

To try solving the puzzles yourself, go to:

Official Website of Volvo's Pirates of the Caribbean treasure hunt www.volvocars.us/thehunt

Offical blog of the Volvo treasure hunt thehunt07.spaces.live.com/

[Last modified June 26, 2007, 12:03:58]