BKT Partners With Iya Traoré, The Soccer-Freestyle Champion
A two-year agreement with the top athlete from Guinea. The project lays the foundation for significant charitable actions.
Seregno (Italy), June 26, 2017 – The first days of June, a cooperation between BKT and the football freestyler Iya Traoré started, which will go on till the middle of the year 2019. Thus the champion will be an official and special guest at the main events all around the globe, in which the Indian multinational will take part, lending his image to the company's marketing activities.
Born in Guinea, Africa, but residing in France, Traoré has played for Paris St. Germain and in other high-ranking international teams. Moreover, he has been entered three times into the Guinness Book of Records thanks to his extraordinary performance abilities with the ball at his foot. BKT's choice to partner with this performer took shape last February at the occasion of SIMA, Paris, where he had been engaged for the first time, unleashing a storm of enthusiasm among the audience by means of his spectacular acrobatic performance.
There is much harmonic accord between the Indian company's key values and Iya Traoré's unparalleled style that led to this agreement. Above all, they share the passion for performance followed by commitment, pursuit of perfection, determination, and resilience. Other factors are a distinct personality, the capacity of conveying enthusiasm, genius, and creativity. In a nutshell: Iya Traoré is the perfect ambassador for his sport, just as BKT for its market, i.e. Off-Highway tires.
Yet, BKT and Iya Traoré have other commonalities that will make this partnership work, namely their give-back philosophy. On the one hand, BKT has been continuously involved in supporting charitable initiatives in its home country, India. Likewise, the champion Iya Traoré – originating from Guinea, still a very poor country – is today able to support his country by means of his foundation helping the 8-to-28-year-olds through sport and educational programs.
Thanks to this agreement, BKT will also play an active role in the project by providing the IYA Foundation school with the material necessary to the students. The company will also support some smaller hospitals through the supply of medical instruments and photovoltaic cells to produce electric current vital to guarantee the continuous functioning of the hospital services.
Yet, it could not be different. BKT has always been committed to a sustainable business model based on shared values that are deeply rooted in the company’s history, putting people and their wellbeing into the focus of attention. A prime example is the BKT Foundation operating readily for the purpose of sustaining projects and initiatives of several nature in India.
“We are really pleased to start this cooperation with Iya Traoré; his way of entertaining the audience and conveying enthusiasm is very similar to our style of approaching the market with great dynamism being always ready for new challenges,” Lucia Salmaso, MD of BKT Europe, states. “The charity project originating from this new experience perfectly fuses into our idea of social responsibility, which stems from BKT’s full awareness of hardships suffered in a large part of the world. For this reason, it is our firm determination to play an active part in the improvement of everybody’s living conditions. A philosophy that passes through all production processes with reduced environmental impact, touches the working community and the social society, and finally provides concrete support for activities of humanitarian nature.”