Making Every Pound Work Harder

  • Media Strategy & Investment
  • Alli Operating System
  • Data & Analytics
  • Audience Intelligence
  • Creative
  • Market Entry & Launch

Breaking through in the UK automotive market, exceeding lead targets without outspending the competition.

+24%

Qualified Leads Vs Target

Challenge

Winning attention without the biggest budget

Geely is part of one of the world’s largest automotive groups but was set to enter the UK market largely unknown to local consumers. Having to compete with established manufacturers and fast-growing challengers, many with media budgets several times larger than its own, further compounded the challenge in front of them.

As Geely UK’s Media Agency of Record and Creative Production Partner, PMG needed to build its recognition, generate qualified demand and support its growing dealer network, all at once.

It wasn’t a simple task of outspending Geely’s competitors. It needed a different advantage, a grounding mantra: making every pound work ten times harder.

That principle shaped our ways of working. TV had to build awareness and create demand that search could capture. Social had to turn interest into qualified leads. Creative had to evolve as we learned what mattered to prospective buyers. Data had to help determine what happened next.

The launch therefore needed to do two things at once: make an immediate impact, in addition to, building the commercial momentum, intelligence and operating model Geely would need to grow in a highly competitive UK automotive market.

Strategy

Connecting every signal through Alli

PMG designed one connected growth engine in which brand and performance strengthened each other. Linear TV would build fame, search would capture demand, creator content would build trust and performance media would convert intent.

Alli, PMG’s proprietary operating system, connected the data behind that journey. We brought together Geely’s CRM, Google Ads, partner-platform data from Driftrock and Halo, and wider media performance data. This gave PMG and Geely a shared view of lead performance, creative effectiveness, geography and investment.

Technology provided the intelligence; our people decided how to use it. PMG’s media, creative and data specialists worked alongside Geely to interpret the signals, understand why they mattered and turn them into coordinated action.

An example of this was how our team used Alli Audience Planner and behavioural insight to identify key personas such as ‘Progressive Pragmatic Families’ as a priority audience: people balancing the excitement of EV ownership with the practical realities of family life. Around them, we created a Total Video ecosystem anchored in a ‘Summer of Sport’, spanning television, streaming, online video, social and search.

The result was a shared system in which every activity contributed to the next decision, making each pound progressively more valuable.

Execution

Building a system that got smarter every week

Removing friction from the lead journey

Every additional click between an advert and an enquiry created another opportunity for a prospective customer to drop out. Working with Driftrock, we introduced native lead experiences across Meta, TikTok and automotive publishers, allowing people to register their interest without leaving the platform they were using.

Driftrock validated leads in real time and routed them automatically to Geely’s dealer network. Those validated conversion signals then flowed back into the advertising platforms and Alli, giving them stronger information for optimisation and helping reduce wasted spend.

Turning signals into live investment decisions

PMG created bespoke Alli dashboards covering lead performance, creative effectiveness and regional opportunity. Lead geolocation data revealed where demand was emerging, helping PMG and Geely direct OOH and digital investment towards priority regions and strengthen media presence around dealerships where it could have the greatest impact.

A near-real-time Linear TV dashboard also showed how television delivery related to branded search and downstream demand while activity was live. These insights did not sit in separate channel reports or wait for a post-campaign review. They shaped live investment decisions and fed a continuous cycle of learning and optimisation.

Letting performance reshape the creative

Performance data showed that native creator content dramatically outperformed polished automotive advertising, while safety and finance messaging consistently generated stronger engagement and lower acquisition costs.

PMG’s creative and media teams acted on those findings throughout the campaign. They produced new TV cutdowns, recommended revised voiceovers, refreshed messaging, recut creator content for paid environments and proactively managed creative fatigue.

Orchestrating one connected summer

The Summer of Sport brought together Linear TV, streaming, YouTube, Meta, TikTok, Reddit, search, premium online video and contextual sports partnerships around major cultural moments, including the FIFA World Cup, Wimbledon and Formula 1.

Premium partnerships extended the strategy beyond sport. Geely sponsored the Prime Video release of Project Hail Mary, securing 100% share of voice across solus opening credits and ‘brought to you by’ bumpers. This extended the brand’s high-attention, big-screen presence into premium streaming environments.

Each channel had a clear role: television created demand, search captured it, creators built credibility and performance media converted it. Alli connected the signals, while PMG’s teams used their judgement to make every element work harder.

Impact

Record leads, rising demand

By the end of Q2 2026, Geely had climbed to 29th in the UK automotive market, its strongest position since entering the country. Activity generated 24% more qualified leads than target, every monthly lead target was exceeded and June 2026 delivered a record high.

During the Summer of Sport, Share of Search increased by 40%. Linear TV supported a 29% increase in Starray EM-i leads, while major FIFA World Cup broadcasts coincided with significant increases in branded search.

Creator-led optimisation reduced TikTok cost per lead by more than 50%. YouTube Brand Lift also indicated that the campaign introduced hundreds of thousands of new consumers to the Geely brand, building awareness while performance activity converted demand.

The lasting impact can be seen in how Geely now works. Alli has become its daily decision-making platform, connecting marketing, lead and business data to guide investment, optimisation and future planning. PMG’s specialists work from the same intelligence, applying context and human judgement to turn each signal into the next action.

Geely now has a connected marketing capability that can grow with its UK business: Alli provides the intelligence, our people turn it into action and the working model keeps every learning moving forward.