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.
A Similar But Different Take On A Feature Film Debut
Similar But Different is not only the moniker for the directorial duo of Dani Girdwood and Charlotte Fassler but also in some respects an apt description of their feature filmmaking debut, My Fault: London (Amazon MGM Studios). The movie, which premiered last week on Amazon Prime Video, has on one level some select elements similar to what we’re accustomed to in the young adult (YA) universe--which helps make it familiar, comfortable and relatable--yet at the same time My Fault: London brings a new, decidedly different dimension to YA entertainment, uniquely meshing action-adventure, mystery, music, romance and humor. The film captures the feel of the underground London culture, lending an authenticity and contemporary vibe that’s a departure from the norm when it comes to the adaptation of YA literature. This mesh of similar but different has served the film well in that there was some target audience skepticism initially over the notion of doing an English adaptation of the popular, fan-favorite Spanish-language novel “Culpa Mia,” the first of the “Culpables” trilogy. Thus it’s most gratifying for Girdwood and Fassler to see the social media response after the release of My Fault: London, with many viewers enthusiastically embracing the film. My Fault: London introduces us to Noah (portrayed by Asha Banks) who’s uprooted from her U.S. hometown, having to leave her boyfriend and friends behind to move with her mother (Eve Macklin) to London. Mom has a new rich husband (Ray Fearon) in London and their new residence is a mansion. There Noah meets Nick (Matthew Broome), her new stepbrother. They have an immediate mutual dislike for each other which blossoms into something quite different over time. Along the... Read More