Tire wear story | Hankook Tire Global official site

Hankook Tire and Peaches, the firm handshake of two global brands

Hankook Tire and Peaches entered into a partnership in 2019. Hankook Tire has built its brand over the past 80 years as a global tire manufacturer; Peaches, a street car culture and fashion brand based in LA, has built up an international fandom base in a short time, starting with a gathering to shoot car videos and design clothes. Sharing the common denominator of the automobiles, the two brands with different geneses are moving towards the same goal.

Peaches, What brand is it?

“Our core objective is to support the automotive culture and not lose the concept of streetcar culture… Peaches operates within youth culture to make it even more fashionable.”

Intaek Yeo, CEO, Peaches.

Taking the name from the slang younger Americans use to describe a beautifully tuned car, a peach, the company Peaches started with the team members sticking peach logos on their back bumpers. Since then, the company has been building a cult-like fandom by generating sensuous videos that display street car culture. Once a month, Peaches sells branded merchandise that reflects the street culture on their website, including clothes, car items, and peach stickers, and they tend to sell out within hours of opening the online store. Peaches often collaborates with the most prominent companies, like Nike, BMW, Playboy, Samsung, and Hyundai, to create campaign videos.

The story that Peaches will build with Hankook Tire

Hankook Tire is not only known embedded in its domestic market but is leading the global tire market, working with premium automakers, such as BMW, Porsche, and Audi, and is a sole supplier of world-renowned motorsport events, including the 24H Series, Super Taikyu, and Global Radical. While Hankook Tire is already an established name in the global tire market and traditional motorsports, Peaches is known as a unique storyteller connecting cars and fashion to create new trends. What kind of story will come from the two companies with distinctively different histories and backgrounds? How will that story resonate with the public?

Interview

“We focused on the fusion of two contents, Hankook Tire's unique asset of having established “a position in traditional motorsports,” and Peaches' asset of “forming a streetcar culture.” We expected this would broaden the automobile culture and expand the brand image of Hankook Tire.”

Dong ock Kim (Motor Culture Project Team)

Q. You signed a partnership agreement with Peaches in 2019. What type of synergy did you expect from the partnership?

Hankook Tire has engaged in brand-marketing activities in various fields with measurable results. However, the brand image reflected in the customers' eyes was still that of a manufacturing company with an incredible inflexible culture. On the other hand, Peaches was associated with a brand image that is innovative, hip, trendy, and one that can communicate with the public. At the time, Peaches already had a large fandom and displayed significant successes in the business-to-consumer (B2C) area while expanding the business to a more business-to-business (B2B) focus.

We made a significant investment and partnered with Peaches with the concept of adding a new brand image to the existing identities (premium and high-tech) we have been pursuing. We believed that the partnership would allow us to reach and connect with the millennials in a friendlier way.

Q. So, how do you plan to connect with Millennials?

In my opinion, one of the most distinctive characteristics of millennials is that they want things to be more natural than artificial. Also, they repeatedly and actively consume the content that they like. This means millennials value experience-focused consumption, and they often socialize or reinterpret that experience on social media. Therefore, in today's brand marketing, it is essential to provide attractive content that can be shared on any social media channel and, above all, to fully utilize digital media.

Q. Can you tell us about the collaborative work you’ve done with Peaches so far?

The commonality between Hankook Tire and Peaches is that they both create and deliver their messages from their respective markets within the automotive industry. Looking closely, Hankook Tire is building prominence in traditional motorsports, while Peaches leads the streetcar culture on public roads. We contemplated merging the two contents in an enticing way for our audiences.

Hankook Tire was selected as the official tire of the world-renowned electric-vehicle race "Formula E Championship." Furthermore, the team sponsored by Hankook Tire, AtlasBX Motorsports team, is bolstering its position as the best team in Asia beyond their home country league. However, motorsports are not yet recognized as a widely popular sport in numerous countries, especially for many millennials. We wanted to create sensual and engaging content that would strike this generation's taste.

We were developing a technology to display information about the tire on sidewalls. We applied the technology to prototype racing tires and captured them in the video format a visually appealing way. Thanks to this, we were able to showcase to Millennials the excellence of Hankook Tire's products and the performance levels in motorsport events.

Q. The collaboration with a designer and rendering artist Kyza seems highly interesting.

I remember getting excited to work with Peaches and Kyza. You could say that our objectives were all aligned. Kyza had experience working with the various car game developers such as EA Sports, and he also engaged with producing videos with vehicles based on the 3-D rendered models that he designed. Kyza also had a large number of followers. Kyza and Peaches wanted to share their followers, and Hankook Tire wanted a new opportunity to create and advertise the brand to Millennials in the global and European market.

While introducing each country's streetcar culture with Peaches and Kyza, we wanted to introduce the attractive brand image of Hankook Tire harmoniously and naturally. Starting from London, UK, we will be expanding the project to the U.S., Japan, Korea, and more.

Q. The partnership with Peaches started three years ago.
I'm curious about the insights you've accrued through your work so far.

While it is difficult to quantify, we have changed the perception to become a more familiar brand. The initial phase of the partnership was the period where we broke down the stereotype and the preconceived image of a tire manufacturer by triggering the thought of "I didn't expect Hankook Tire to be involved in such projects." Since the beginning, both online and offline projects have helped us get ever closer to the objective. Because of the marketability of Peaches in the U.S. automotive culture among the younger generation, we now receive inquiries through Peaches on our sports tires, such as RS4-Z232, from overseas.

Q. You opened a culture complex, Peaches D8NE, this past July in Seongsu-dong, one of the hip places in Seoul. Why did you expand the collaboration to incorporate offline?

As we work with Peaches to build an enjoyable street car culture for Millennials, we want to make it more tangible. This is a comprehensive cultural space where diverse cultures such as automobiles, fashion, and gastronomy have been condensed, advertised, and experimented with by Hankook Tire and Peaches. Here, we have "Garage," a space that displays the custom automobile culture, and the "Fuel Gallery," where food vendors Knotted Donut and Downtowner Burger are located. There are also areas for co-branded goods.

As they subconsciously saw the brand Hankook Tire as they took pictures, sat, and ate donuts in this space, we hope they can naturally remember the name again when needing to buy tires.

Going forward, we will continue to collaborate with Peaches to plan and execute the events involving Hankook Tire Goods, food and beverages, and video content to communicate with consumers more intimately. We plan to provide new entertainment options and enjoyable experiences that reflect the characteristics and tastes of Millennials, and we will continue to work hard to make them feel more familiar with the Hankook Tire brand.

More Articles