Journeys that Matter
KIA had built brilliant financial success, but with a fundamental shift in design and quality of its manufacturing, it wanted to elevate its brand to become a more premium competitor than the ‘squeezed middle’ of volume car sellers.
That’s not easy to do, but with the help of some fantastical woodland creatures, a cantankerous mum, a shedload of graffiti, some dogs and an artist’s homage to the Disney Pixar movie UP, we managed to take the client on a very special journey indeed.
The insight:
Most cars share the same silhouette, the same features, even the same OEM parts. So it’s harder and harder for brands to differentiate their models from other carmakers’. This is known as the ‘Pretty Good Problem’* – fundamentally, it’s hard to buy a ‘rubbish’ car these days, so the only real differentiator is the power of its brand. So how does Kia stand out?
Cars are not a ‘tool’ like, say, a washing machine or lawn mower. We form deep attachments to our cars, make them part of the family – even name them.
(Data from Tech Tracker found that people form stronger attachments to their cars than they do to their favourite social media platform. Which is cray, considering how long people spend in both.)
When we unpacked this attachment it was clear that cars become beloved because they share emotional journeys with us. They were there to get us to the hospital on time, or to leave home to go to university.
By focusing on Kia not as a tool that gets you from A to B but as a partner who joins you on life’s journeys – the journeys that really matter – we could help build that brand attachment.
*Steven Berlin Johnson
The results:
The results for this campaign were nothing short of spectacular – even though we do say so ourselves. Consideration for the Kia range doubled – and then doubled again.For the Kia Optima – featured in our UNSAID short film – it increased by over 1500%.
Speaking of the film – it received over 140,000 views online in less than a week – and over 52% of those that watched it completed it.
We saw a brand sentiment uplift of 7%, and focus group testing on the film UNSAID had audiences placing the Kia brand above premium rivals Volvo for the first time ever.
And the campaign more than paid for itself – Kia reported a sales increase of £2.2m that could be directly attributed to our campaign. I guess this was a journey that really did matter, after all.
Journeys that Matter
KIA had built brilliant financial success, but with a fundamental shift in design and quality of its manufacturing, it wanted to elevate its brand to become a more premium competitor than the ‘squeezed middle’ of volume car sellers.
That’s not easy to do, but with the help of some fantastical woodland creatures, a cantankerous mum, a shedload of graffiti, some dogs and an artist’s homage to the Disney Pixar movie UP, we managed to take the client on a very special journey indeed.
The insight:
Most cars share the same silhouette, the same features, even the same OEM parts. So it’s harder and harder for brands to differentiate their models from other carmakers’. This is known as the ‘Pretty Good Problem’* – fundamentally, it’s hard to buy a ‘rubbish’ car these days, so the only real differentiator is the power of its brand. So how does Kia stand out?
Cars are not a ‘tool’ like, say, a washing machine or lawn mower. We form deep attachments to our cars, make them part of the family – even name them.
(Data from Tech Tracker found that people form stronger attachments to their cars than they do to their favourite social media platform. Which is cray, considering how long people spend in both.)
When we unpacked this attachment it was clear that cars become beloved because they share emotional journeys with us. They were there to get us to the hospital on time, or to leave home to go to university.
By focusing on Kia not as a tool that gets you from A to B but as a partner who joins you on life’s journeys – the journeys that really matter – we could help build that brand attachment.
*Steven Berlin Johnson
The results:
The results for this campaign were nothing short of spectacular – even though we do say so ourselves. Consideration for the Kia range doubled – and then doubled again.For the Kia Optima – featured in our UNSAID short film – it increased by over 1500%.
Speaking of the film – it received over 140,000 views online in less than a week – and over 52% of those that watched it completed it.
We saw a brand sentiment uplift of 7%, and focus group testing on the film UNSAID had audiences placing the Kia brand above premium rivals Volvo for the first time ever.
And the campaign more than paid for itself – Kia reported a sales increase of £2.2m that could be directly attributed to our campaign. I guess this was a journey that really did matter, after all.
