Lynk & Co

Peter Horbury is a name which reverberates around the automotive industry. As the Executive Vice President of Design at Geely, he oversees the development of Geely Auto Group’s core brands: Geely Auto and the new Lynk & Co brand.

We talked to Peter about the positioning work we did for Lynk & Co.

“Geely was creating a new car brand born in China, but the first Chinese car brand to be attractive enough to be sold around the world. The intention was to position it between Volvo and Geely as a so called ‘near premium’ brand.

Chairman Li, Geely’s owner, asked me to found the project so I literally started with a blank piece of paper. I engaged five young promising designers to develop the brand’s car design and I brought you guys at Lynxeye in to develop the positioning:

For whom should we build this new brand? What should the brand stand for? What implications would consequently guide the outer and inner design of the car models?”

“With a market that already consists of 86 car makers, the challenge is of course to create a car that is meaningfully different from all the others. It must add something and build on an unmet need among new car users, that is big enough to build a sustainable brand around.”

“I needed expertise that could define a distinct brand across regions. With Lynxeye’s presence in Asia and long experience in the Americas and in Europe, I knew you would fulfill that requirement.

After our joint work in developing a new and still very successful positioning for Volvo Cars, I knew you guys would live up to the challenge.”

“What made Lynk & Co concept so special was its very very distinct brand pillars. The target for Lynk & Co was to attract young urban consumers who live in the big cities not because they have to, but because they want to.

They strive in the metropoles of the world, they love the buzz, the energy and the heterogeneity of the place. So to make the brand aspirational for them, we built the brand persona around the idea of an Urban Hero.

The brand would be characterized by four main attributes: Proud, Personal, Respectful and After Dark. After Dark was highly controversial, but allowed us to use the Chinese heritage by interpreting the city life at night.”

“Imagine looking across the Pudong river, the skyscrapers, the metal, the vivid neon colors. Hence, the design now includes a black band across the width of the car that contains the head lights to visually excite in the same way as a metropolitan city.

For young urbans the usage form isn’t as important, but it matters what kind of car you sit in and what it looks like. Hence, the car is offered to be shared, leased, rented or borrowed, to accommodate the individual conditions of the target group. At the same time, a lot of effort is placed in the cocooning interior design, brilliant and vivid colors, instead of traditional chrome trim.”