By Nicole Rivard
Shouldn’t a car have more airbags than cupholders? When a car company charges for roadside assistance aren’t they really just helping themselves? Shouldn’t you drive a car that inflates your intelligence, not your ego?
These are just a few of the questions that Hyundai’s new advertising campaign–aimed at reframing the brand and created by Goodby, Silverstein and Partners–poses to consumers to challenge conventional thinking about the auto industry. This project is the first major creative work for Hyundai by GS&P, which was hired this past spring.
Phase one of the “Think About It” campaign, which kicked off earlier this month, features three weeks of unbranded advertising. The intention is to increase the receptivity of a consumer audience that is increasingly skeptical of marketing messages, by offering startling proof points deployed across print, broadcast, outdoor and online.
“Hyundai suffers from a brand perception problem. They make great cars but unfortunately the badge carries a lot of old baggage from a time when the cars may have been considered inferior. When a brand’s perception and reality are so far apart, the situation calls for a press of the reset button,” explained Will McGinness, creative director, GS&P.
“We wanted to approach this almost as if a new car company was launching. We wanted people to know that Hyundai has values in line with theirs and that it was time to finally pay attention to this car company.”
Consumers are asked to think about those values in eight 15-second spots, directed by Laurent Chanez of Identity Media, NYC. The spots portray driving scenes through varied landscapes that are meant to tap into viewer’s memories and emotions of driving.
“We didn’t want these to feel like overtly typical beautiful driving spots, but rather pieces that felt like they had no beginning or end, pieces that felt emotionally recognizable. Without Laurent’s delicate touch, these could have easily become blurry dollies of landscapes,” said Diko Daghlian, art director, GS&P. “Instead, Laurent really helped us arrive at a place where each 15-second spot felt like it packed in much more than 15 seconds of looking out a window. He really captured a feeling versus a landscape.”
All of the spots drive viewers to www.thinkaboutit.com, which was conceived and designed in-house at GS& P. “The goal of the website for this initial reframe phase that lasts a couple weeks is to collect these thoughts in one place and to position Hyundai as a more thoughtful brand that stands outside of the category,” said McGinness.
The site delves deeper into the issues brought up in the spots. For instance, when you roll over the spot that asks, “Shouldn’t a car have more airbags than cupholders?,” visitors are provided with important statistics like, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that side-impact airbags reduce fatalities by nearly 40 percent but that not every car has them. Then it goes on to say that side-torso airbags are standard on all Hyundai cars. Clicking on illustrations embedded in the text reveal even more details about the characteristics of Hyundai’s airbags.
Transistor Studios, New York, worked with the agency to produce the site in Flash. “We knew we wanted to run larger format videos, which were a little challenging to optimize in Flash for the site. So we basically had to recreate the text animation so it didn’t bog down the user’s processor and cause obnoxious load times,” McGinness said.
A more robust thinkaboutit.com will launch at the end of the month. Phase two of the campaign will expand upon the “think about it” positioning, identify the brand as Hyundai and get people to dig a little more deeply into the brand. The campaign will actively ask the consumer to “think about” unique truths regarding the Hyundai brand. “Current Hyundai consumers are extremely well informed. They’ve taken the time to go beyond the negative brand image, read the consumer reports and learn about the cars. We basically want to bring this information to the forefront and get people to consider Hyundai from a new perspective,” said McGinness.
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More