SEEING THE DIFFERENCE

Soon after he arrived at Kia, Schreyer developed a manifesto called ‘The River Stone and the Billiard Ball’, which he believes helps distinguish between the brand values of Kia and Hyundai. He has since published a book illustrating the subject.

Schreyer keeps both river stones and billiard balls on the desk of his sixth-floor office inside Hyundai’s Frankfurt HQ and is inclined to give one or both to visitors as presents. He sees a river stone as the guiding image for Hyundai, an unpredictable, natural shape. They may be very similar, but no two stones are ever the same. By contrast, the guiding image for Kia is a billiard ball, manmade, uniform, precise, carefully coloured and surfaced and whose dimensions are precisely known. That’s the difference.