ARRRR!

There be pirates about!

Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest hit theaters earlier this month during a hail of marketing tie-ins pelting consumers like grapeshot.

Volvo, Kodak, Kellogg's, Visa, MySpace and Verizon are among companies latching on to the sequel to the surprise 2003 blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which debuted July 7.

When Disney's first Pirates movie was announced, plenty scoffed: A movie based on an amusement park ride? The laughter abruptly stopped after it grossed $47 million in its opening weekend, ending up with $653 million in worldwide revenue. Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow was a strange and likable character, a sort of fey Keith Richards in pirate garb, good enough to receive an Oscar nod.

This time, the corporate sponsors couldn't board fast enough.

LATCHING ON

Others have latched on to the Pirates launch, though they are not official sponsors or partners. The History Channel's True Caribbean Pirates aired July 9 -- two days after the movie opened; Legoland, a California amusement park, opened its Pirate Shores ride.

Oren Aviv, vice president of marketing for Disney Studios, said he doesn't mind the hangers-on. ''It only confirms, at least in my mind, that we have something really amazing here,'' he said. ``We had a number of sponsors last time, but not as much stuff going on as this time.''

Part of the appeal speaks to the popularity of the film franchise, but another part speaks to the enduring appeal of the storybook notion of a buccaneer. From the Pirates of Penzance to Long John Silver's, pirates have been a reliable draw for decades.

Sparrow is the kind of a pirate that makes kids don eye patches at Halloween and grown men walk around the office growling, ''Arrrr!'' Sparrow is a thief, but he is a clever scoundrel, a rapscallion, more likely to do harm to his standing in the pirate community than to an enemy. He is a thumbed nose in the face of British colonial authority -- he sticks it to ye olde man. And advertisers know many of their customers imagine those traits in themselves.

People (especially guys) can't seem to get enough of pirates. Witness the 20,000 views of a throwaway Saturday Night Live skit on YouTube that featured a pirate convention whose keynote speaker was actor Peter Sarsgaard, just because the pirates liked saying his name, ''Sarrrs-gaarrrrd!'' There are an annual Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19); a website that generates a pirate name for you; and a website, Pirate Mod.com, that sells ``alternative fashion with a piratical attitude.''

ADVERTISING SYMBOL

It's hard to imagine a popular advertising symbol that has such a disconnect from its real-world roots as the pirate. It's as if Attila the Hun had undergone a Madison Avenue makeover, or if a soda company unveiled a New Pol Pot, the huggable huckster. Most old-time pirates were a foul, murderous lot, with pillaging practices and personal hygiene habits that would have shamed the Visigoths.

On the other hand, their outside-the-box thinking was often valued by the establishment, which had a more acceptable name for them -- privateers.

''When historians try to put pirates into context, it only raises more questions about who was a real pirate,'' Frank Lambert, a history professor and pirate expert at Purdue University, wrote in an e-mail, citing British naval hero and one-time pirate Sir Francis Drake. ''You might say a pirate is in the eye of the beholder.'' Or, perhaps, the aye of the beholder.

There's a lot less to like about modern pirates, who aren't lovable old salts with chatty parrots on their shoulders. They are seaborne thugs, firing rocket-propelled grenades at cruise ships off the coast of Somalia or holding Filipino seamen hostage.

In the conflicted pirate image, consumers and advertisers effectively have divorced reality from fantasy, said Peter Arnell, an expert on branding. ''They are filled with a balance between charm and danger,'' he said by phone from Los Angeles. ``They fly against the rules, they live on the open sea and do what they want.''

Another branding expert, Steve Addis, agrees.

''They have been romanticized beyond just thieves,'' he said. 'They project a maverick personality, a free-spirited independent personality. It's an easy way [for a brand] to say, `I'm not a conformist.' It's shorthand.''

THE CONNECTION

But what, exactly, about safety-first, airbag-stuffed Volvos screams ''maverick''? The Volvo connection with the new Pirates movie actually grew out of the company's annual around-the-world yacht race that recently concluded. Volvo was seeking an American sponsor for one of the boats, to increase the race's U.S. profile.

Last year the company approached Disney, which saw a promotional opportunity for the Pirates sequel. The company festooned the sails of a 70-foot monohull racing yacht with images and words from the movie, and a circumnavigating promotional vehicle was christened. (Though most of the race's 32,700 open-ocean miles were spent promoting the movie to curious marine life.)

Volvo's auto division wondered how it could get a piece o' the Pirates plunder. ''We couldn't have product placement in this film,'' said Roger Ormisher, vice president of public affairs for Volvo North America. ''It's kind of tough to get an XC90 [SUV] into the movie,'' which is set in the 1720s.

So the automaker concocted a consumer treasure hunt that involves obtaining a treasure map at a Volvo dealer and answering e-mail puzzles that lead to the whereabouts of a buried $82,000 Volvo XC90. Two weeks into the promotion, more than 34,000 people have picked up maps at Volvo dealers, Ormisher said.

''And they probably wouldn't have walked into our retailers'' without the contest, he said.

As for the unlikely marriage of Volvo and pirates, Ormisher pointed out that hordes of Vikings -- perhaps the first pirates -- marauded their way out of Sweden, home of Volvo.