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Hyundai New Advertising Getting Results and Awards - VIDEO ENHANCED


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2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe - Coming Soon

Special to The Auto Channel
by Marty Bernstein
AIADA Contributing Editor

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New ads and advertising campaigns from Hyundai North America are breaking the oldest axiom in the advertising business, “Half my ad dollars don’t work, I just don’t know which half.”

At the recently concluded New York International Auto Show, IAG Research (a prestigious advertising research company) awarded Hyundai the “Most effective New Nameplate Launch Campaign” for the Vera Cruz SUV. IAG’s study ranked auto company commercials that television viewers (cable and network) remembered and liked best from November 1, 2007 to January 26, 2008.

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In the winning commercial the new Vera Cruz is not so subtly compared to the more expensive Lexus RX 350. “Winning this award,” said Joel Ewanick, Hyundai’s vice president marketing, “validates that our new “Think About It” campaign is changing the way customers view Hyundai.”

Click PLAY to watch the Hyundai Vera Cruz TV commercial

A major objective of Hyundai’s new advertising, Ewanick told me recently is, “To create more awareness for the Hyundai brand and add it to more peoples list.” Solid brand awareness is often the trigger for consideration in traditional advertising, but this campaign, in my view, has taken a new direction that is both defining and provocative.

As a former advertising executive with Hyundai’s previous agency, the Richards Group in Dallas, Texas, Ewanick is an experienced automotive marketing/advertising professional who knows what he wants … and gets it too.

Almost immediately after taking the new position at Hyundai he put the account he had supervised into review. This, in ad-speak, means getting a new agency. The winner of the several month long competition was the Goodby, Silverstein & Partners advertising agency.

The Veracruz ads were up against stiff competition from Nissan Rouge and the Mazda CX-9 ad creative. The awards were presented by Gary Ginsberg, executive vice president, Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs, News Corporation, the media conglomerate that owns The Wall Street Journal, TV Guide and Fox Broadcasting Network among others.

The IAG Automotive Awards is the only awards program measuring effectiveness of automobile ads and are based on response data from 2.5 million viewers of national television advertising collected over a period of time on 23 measured TV networks.

While the “good ole days” of automotive advertising, running footage with voiceover or local dealers on-camera shouting prices and low down payments, the number of truly creative advertising is done by very few.

Telling an automotive brand’s story and selling simultaneously in any medium is a rare, but Hyundai ads are very well done as the IAG Automotive Award proves. And the numbers prove the point. Through March Hyundai sales are up 2%. And while the Vera Cruz isn’t exactly the top model in the line-up, the impact and affect of the ads reaches consumers for other models. Advertising designed to sell something, now there’s a unique concept.

Click the PLAY buttons below to watch Hyundai's Super Bowl TV spots that aired this past January