Hyundai tripled its brand consideration with mispronunciation ad

Research firm YouGov polled consumers in the two months post-campaign and found consideration to buy a Hyundai vehicle had reached its highest rate since 2013.

‘It’s the dawn of a new Hyundai,’ campaign dropped on Boxing Day with a 40-second ad featuring people incorrectly pronouncing Hyundai into their phone sat-navs and ending up at the wrong destination.

The ad, created by the Innocean agency, had the highest increase of ’word of mouth’ exposure compared with any other brand tracked by YouGov in the UK during January. YouGov’s ’word of mouth’ metric is based on whether consumers have talked about the brand with family or friends and the research found more people are discussing Hyundai now than at any time since the pollsters started tracking the brand a decade ago.

Running on TV, radio, online and VOD, the goal of the campaign was to shift perceptions of the Hyundai brand while promoting its Ioniq 5 electric vehicle. Ashley Andrew, managing director of Hyundai Motor UK, said at the time of release that the campaign aimed to “inject a little humor and personality“ into the brand, which he hoped “will encourage more people to learn more about Hyundai”.

‘It’s the dawn of a new Hyundai’ clearly won over the highest-earning consumers, with the over-£50,000-a-year salary bracket talking more about the brand than any other. The research doesn’t tell us, however, whether that’s due to the placement of the ads or the message.

The over-50-year-old demographic are also more likely to be talking about the campaign than other age groups, however past YouGov data looking at the wider car market has found that over-50s are least likely to buy a car in 2023.

While ads can often be polarizing, Hyundai’s spot had an overwhelmingly positive response when looking at its YouGov ’buzz’ score. The brand tracker, which assesses whether consumers had heard anything positive or negative about the brand, had doubled from 3.1 on January 1 to 7.0 on January 28.