Hankook &'s Hankook premium AGM battery. The company ran an experiential pop-up event at Daegu Samsung Lions Park to expand customer touchpoints for its automotive battery brand. [Hankook & provided]
Hankook &'s Hankook premium AGM battery. The company ran an experiential pop-up event at Daegu Samsung Lions Park to expand customer touchpoints for its automotive battery brand. [Hankook & provided]

Hankook & took its battery brand marketing to a baseball stadium, staging an experiential campaign to broaden customer touchpoints for "Hankook," the group's unified brand spanning its tire and battery businesses.

The company said Monday it ran a "Strike Zone" pop-up event at the outdoor plaza of Daegu Samsung Lions Park from July 17 to 19 to promote the Hankook battery brand.

The event was organized jointly with Hankook Tire & Technology. It centered on participatory programs designed to let fans attending the professional baseball series between the Samsung Lions and the Lotte Giants naturally engage with both the Hankook battery and Hankook Tire brands.

The flagship activity was the "Battery Time Attack," in which participants had to press a stop button at exactly the two-second mark as a battery-shaped timer counted down. Hankook & said the game was intended to convey, in an intuitive way, the performance of its premium AGM battery and its two-year quality warranty.

Tire-themed games ran alongside the battery activity. Hankook Tire & Technology operated "Tire Strike," where participants rolled a tire to knock down bowling pins, and "Tire Ring Toss," where they threw tire tubes onto a pole. Participants received tire discount vouchers, portable fans and paper sun visors.

In the automotive aftermarket, direct brand experiences have grown as important as product performance in reaching consumers. With summer monsoon rains and heat waves driving up demand for battery and tire checks, on-site marketing tied to outdoor sporting events has become an increasingly effective channel.

Under Chairman Cho Hyun-bum's brand strategy, Hankook & has been working to strengthen its battery business around the unified Hankook brand. Last October, the company unveiled a new brand identity featuring the tagline "Charge in Motion," which encapsulates the identity of its battery business.

Meanwhile, the Hankook battery is one of the core businesses of the Hankook & group. The company has built a sales network covering about 100 countries and more than 450 customers worldwide, and operates its battery supply system from domestic factories in Jeonju and Daejeon as well as a production base in the United States.

"This pop-up was designed to let customers directly experience the outstanding quality and brand value of the Hankook battery," a company official said. "We plan to continue expanding our communication with customers and raising awareness of our competitiveness through a variety of customer touchpoints going forward."


kwater@heraldcorp.com