By Alpha Ba, Head of Marketing, European Brands at Stellantis ME
Earlier this year, the Peugeot team launched a regional CSR campaign that saw us visit schools to raise awareness about road safety amongst children. We created a storybook called ‘Buckle Up!’ with road safety tips, and held reading sessions to engage with the community. I must say I was overwhelmed by how the lion emblem on the storybook was received by children and adults, and the memories people had of this iconic brand. One child’s comment - “My father had the lion car” - made me chuckle.
It was evident that the Peugeot logo, which was created in 1850, is still guiding Peugeot’s journey through time. It is a symbol that highlights the brand’s personality, character, and values. It has become a recognizable symbol of our past but is also our bridge towards the future. Many special models in the Peugeot lineup have worn the badge proudly since the brand’s inception in 1810. From the classy 403 to the sporty 205 GTi, our emblem has served as a timeless, universal, and multicultural form of identity and is a distinctive symbol of belonging, synonymous with confidence and longevity.
My own memories of Peugeot extend far beyond my current role within the Stellantis Group and have helped shape my career and outlook for the future. Growing up in France, I was able to witness the brand’s evolution and had the opportunity to be a part of it in my role as a Sales and Customer Experience Specialist at PSA Retail in Paris in 2018.
In my current role, I continue to be part of Peugeot’s evolution with Stellantis Group and the brand embarks on a new journey. I was lucky to witness the reveal of the new visual identity and the redesigning of our lion emblem. The new design keeps our legacy at the forefront, yet looks forward with a more streamlined, qualitative, and elegant design that symbolizes our aspirations for the future. The new lion embodies what Peugeot meant yesterday, what Peugeot means today, and what Peugeot will mean tomorrow.
Our visual identity is only one part of our journey. We are completely reimagining what it means to own a Peugeot. We are shifting our focus from ‘traditional automotive brand communication’ to customer interactions that transform time spent into quality time. This new commitment to enhance the customer experience goes across all elements of Peugeot, from vehicles and dealers to websites and all communications channels.
In the Middle East, my team and I are creating the right strategies and campaigns to communicate to both existing and prospective customers the values Peugeot can bring to their lives. Take our ‘Lions of Our Time’ campaign for instance, whereby we are developing methods to empower customers to own their most valuable asset: their time. The brand aims to turn time into quality time with enriching experiences. As an innovative, high-end generalist brand, this is what we are aiming to do across the board, providing experiences both online, in vehicles, and in all our dealerships.
This multifaceted approach we are taking essentially means we are building the brand from the bottom up, reinforcing our commitment to provide mobility solutions that meet our customer’s needs. We are launching new modern vehicles, while also striving towards an electric future for both passenger and light commercial vehicles (LCVs). This year alone, we launched six new models in the Middle East, including our first plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV), the 3008 Hybrid-4 which we are very proud of! It is our first step in our electrification approach and our commitment to “Turning Sustainable Mobility into Quality Time.” Electrification is at the heart of Peugeot’s ‘Power of Choice’ strategy, and we’ve made a commitment globally that most of our range will be electrified by 2025, which also follows the Stellantis electrification roadmap.
As the automotive industry enters a new era and embraces a future that will introduce electric vehicles, autonomy, digitization, and more, it’s important to remember key lessons learned in the past in order to push forward. Peugeot is a brand that understands this more than ever as it adjusts to life under the newly formed Stellantis Group.
Our goal for the Middle East is to change the way customers experience our brand, both online and in-store, while also transforming our own working culture. Our world has drastically changed over the last year and a half, completely reshaping our approach to the business. As the post-pandemic generation, it is now imperative that we take the lessons from the past and merge them with the promise of tomorrow, creating, in turn, experiences that are innovative, imaginative, and most importantly impactful.
