The car maker that's ready for the big time - Telegraph.co.uk
“That was behind our reasoning to sponsor Surrey and the Kia Oval, an iconic London venue with great branding opportunities, and we’ve had a very successful tie-up for us. We’re hopeful that the resurgence of the England cricket team will help... ” Fifa is trickier, though Hyundai Kia issued a statement after Blatter’s resignation announcement, saying that it “welcomed” Fifa’s commitment to tighten its governance structure. “The Fifa sponsorship is a global deal negotiated and agreed at our global head office in Seoul,” Philpott says carefully. It remains to be seen whether Kia will give tickets to Moscow to its 25 top-performing UK dealers, as it did for last’s year’s World Cup Final in Rio. After a Loughborough University finance degree, he joined Ford as a sales and marketing trainee, staying for nine years, before a similar stretch at Toyota UK, becoming UK marketing director and commercial director. “In 2006, Kia was a small brand selling fewer than 30,000 cars a year. Philpott joined as UK and Ireland managing director in 2007, moved to Frankfurt as chief operating officer of Kia Motors Europe in 2009 and then returned to the UK in 2012 as the first non-Korean president of any national market. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
