Hyundai marketing boss on managing ‘second album’ stress
A campaign schooling the public about the correct pronunciation of its name helped triple the car maker’s brand consideration. As he prepares to judge The Drum Marketing Awards 2024, Richard Wolfe, head of brand communications at Hyundai, reflects on the pressure he’s feeling for a follow-up.
‘It’s the dawn of a new Hyundai,’ campaign first debuted Boxing Day 2022
‘The Dawn of a New Hyundai’ launched on Christmas Day 2022, the 40-second TV spot showing people incorrectly pronouncing the motor company’s name into their phone sat-navs and ending up at the wrong destination as a result. The campaign sent its brand consideration score through the roof, resulting in a bigger increase in ’word of mouth’ exposure than any other brand tracked by YouGov in the UK during January.
The ad marked the start of Hyundai’s ’New Dawn’ brand platform and now its marketing team is planning the second installment, hoping it can replicate this success.
Richard Wolfe, the head of brand communications, is tasked with developing what he jokingly refers to as its “dreaded second album.”
“You want to recreate it; you want to do exactly the same again, but you can’t. That’s not how the world works. If you did exactly the same again, it wouldn’t have the cut through.”
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The “difficulty,” says Wolfe, is “how far do you take it from the original idea to make it fresh while keeping it close enough that people remember it.”
Wolfe and his team have worked up two new ideas; one is close to the original advert, while the other takes it in an entirely new direction. Both are funny, he says, but he can’t share much more. Both will now go into testing, with the one that comes out on top then being made.
“I’d be amazed if it does as well as the first one, but there’s obviously something there that we can keep going with,” he says, adding that there is an acceptance from the C-suite that not every ad campaign can be a standout hit.
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Not wanting the original ads to “be a flash in the pan,” though, Hyundai has kept the ‘New Dawn’ comms running throughout 2023 by embedding it into its traditional car advertising. It will also be rerunning the hero ads at Christmas.
The original ‘New Dawn’ brief
Last year, Hyundai decided to go on an awareness and consideration drive to show the UK market the car manufacturer had a clear point of difference and to do so the marketing team needed a brand campaign with personality.
“Samey,” is how Wolfe describes a typical car ad – “a beautiful person driving up the mountain road who then turns up at this impossibly expensive house while you’re given some inspirational talk over the top of it.”
He adds: ”We’ve seen too much of it. It’s boring. But no other car manufacturer could have run ‘New Dawn.’ It could only be for Hyundai.”
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Interestingly, traditional car adverts still test well with customers who are considering buying a car, but that wasn’t the audience Wolfe was going after. “What we’re trying to do is captivate and make something interesting to them and then, further down the funnel, we can tell them about the car.”
The brief to agency Innocean was relatively short. “We asked them to come up with something that isn’t going to piss people off, that is going to get across the fact that we have changed and to lean on humor and a little bit of self-deprecation.”
The mispronunciation concept will continue for now, but won’t be labored. “We don’t want to be a brand that is known for mispronunciation. We want to be a brand known for amazing cars and incredible technology. Mispronunciation ads are a way to get there, but if in 10 years we’re still running mispronunciation ads, then we’ve ultimately failed.”