Pelle Norberg - a madforsailing interview

Bob Fisher meets the man behind the Team SEB campaign for the Volvo Ocean Race

Pelle Norberg is the Managing Director of Global Team AB which is the company behind the Team SEB project for the Volvo Ocean Race. He worked in the IT industry in the travel trade until eight months ago when he sat down and said to himself, "You should work with something that is much more related to your hobby and your interest, and that's sailing."
He made a telephone call to Lars Ahrens, one of the company's owners, and told him that he was managing director of an IT company and interested in working in sailing and asked whether there was anything he could do for him. They met two weeks later and Gurra Krantz was there. They had read his CV and talked to his referees; they told him that they would like him to be the MD of Global Team on the Team SEB project. He started on October 1.

madforsailing: What is the relationship between Global Team and Team SEB, particularly in how it has helped Team SEB?

PN: The whole Team SEB project was initiated by Global Team. Global Team has worked for 15 years on projects within yachting, like Intrum Justitia,The Card, and Swedish Match, so we have considerable experience with this kind of project. We see ourselves at the centre of the wheel. We actually produce the product, the different kind of offers that we are presenting to our potential partners in this project and we keep track of everything that is happening when it comes to public relations, marketing, communications all around the world. Global Team is acting as a communications centre for the project.

Many people have the idea that the Volvo Ocean Race is just a yacht race, but it is a lot more than that, isn’t it?

PN: If you look at Team SEB and that’s what we are calling it right now, Global Team is just the legal entity behind it all today, it is organised like a company. We have a finance department, a web and IT department, a marketing, press and media department, and a sailing and racing department. There are many things happening outside the sailing.

This takes a great load off Gurra Krantz and the crew...

PN: Yes. Ten or fifteen years ago, when this sort of thing was new, it was the skipper going around with a hat in his hand asking for money, and all the administration and sails work was done by the crew. It has taken a lot of the load off Gurra with this organisation behind him.

The aim of the project is to win the Volvo Ocean Race and thereby maximise the effect of the publicity you can generate?

PN: Absolutely, this is a commercial project based on sporting efforts. We don’t want to hide that in any way. We would like to have as much publicity as possible, so we are working with tv, the internet, with press that’s a part of the game.

Do you have the entire budgetary control?

PN: Yes. I’m responsible for the budget and as far as I can see, we are in control. We have a couple more partners that we need to get, but we still have a couple more months to go and I am absolutely sure that on September 23, when the race starts, we will have the proper structure that we need to fulfil this and do it in the right way.

You have SEB as the major sponsor and two secondary partners in Investor and Ericsson. Is it that level that you are looking for?

PN: We would like one or two more co-partners at US$2 millions, and one or more at one of the lower levels, the support partners. We have four levels in our pyramid, there’s the sponsor, SEB, the co-partners, the official suppliers and the support partners. We need three or four more in the pyramid structure.

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