Volvo USA has teamed up with Jeremy Lin, the US basketball star to promote its vehicles to a younger audience in several international markets.

Photo: Jeremy Lin, from autoblog.com

The 23-year-old New York Knick player, the US-born son of Taiwanese immigrants also has an agreement with Nike that plans to produce a Lin-themed shoe.

On of the main market where Lin will promote Volvo is China. The Volvo brand is now owned by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co which aims to boost Volvo sales in China as part of a strategy to double the brand’s global sales to 800,000 vehicles by 2020, says The WSJ.  Volvo sold about 47,000 cars in China last year, which is up 54% from 2010.

The basketball star is expected to promote Volvo online. Lin who has more than 664,000 Twitter followers and near 2,6 million followers on Weibo, blogs in both Mandarin and English.

Last fall, Volvo’s VP-Global Marketing Richard Monturo said the company is building its marketing strategy mainly on social media and digital. «We think the primary device in auto marketing is the internet,» said Mr. Monturo. «We have teams focusing on how we can upgrade the user experiences in all our social presences. We’re using the ‘designed around you’ idea but trans-creating around the world.»

Now, Volvo is also collaborating with ELVIIS to develop the echarging systems for electric cars.