Asked how he plans to marry those two seemingly opposing notions, Favey replies: “For us, both go together. Yes, we want to be upper mainstream, but we are a mainstream brand, which means we want to sell cars to everybody.”
Tough gig. How do you simultaneously boost the aspirational element of a brand while both enhancing its attainability and using it as a platform to introduce potentially divisive new technology and features?
Can Favey really make Peugeot’s cars more alluring and more ubiquitous at once, in the context of a market environment that is more tempestuous and crowded than ever before?
It’s a tricky task that will require him to make the fundamentals of the brand’s positioning more solid than perhaps they have been since it started making coffee grinders and handsaws more than 200 years ago.
Undaunted, he says: “That’s what I’m here for as a CEO: to really make sure that this brand is stronger in 10 years or in 20 years than it is today. It starts with the positioning of the brand, to make sure that the brand stands out from the competition, and the competition is every day a bit wider, a bit more tough than it was before, so having a heritage like we do is a big help.”
Basically, he suggests, Peugeot needs to be more Peugeoty than it has ever been before—making cars that are more distinctive, more interesting, more bespoke—to keep ahead of rivals and cultivate a real sense of personality.
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