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Hyundai Seeks New Connections to Consumers

Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America Inc.’s advertising splash during Super Bowl 50 was a setup for a new branding campaign that’s scheduled to be in full swing come spring.

The automaker, which is paying about $50 million a year to be the official automotive sponsor of the National Football League, spent another $20 million for three ad spots that featured humorous messages during the big game. It also hosted a pregame show on the CBS network, which had exclusive rights to the live TV broadcast.

The pregame show included a separate, brand-burnishing spot titled “Better,” which foreshadowed the upcoming campaign, aiming to connect consumers with the automaker on an emotional level rather than advertise a specific car or a sales event.

“When people say, ‘What does Hyundai stand for?’ we want them to think that it’s a company that really believes in making things better for our customers,” said Chief Marketing Officer Dean Evans. “We will be launching [the 2017] Elantra within this new brand direction. We are going to officially kick off our full media … starting in March.”

Hyundai has not disclosed spending plans for the upcoming campaign.

The ads were created by InnoceanUSA in Huntington Beach, its agency of record, which is also developing materials for the “Better” campaign.

The automaker ended 2015 with sales of 761,710 vehicles, a 5% year-over-year increase. It was its best year ever in the U.S. market, but the increase was below a 5.7% sales gain among all auto brands nationwide. Evans joined Hyundai in August from

Subaru, hailed for his experience in digital marketing. He had two priorities on his agenda: to generate more traffic in the dealer showrooms and to build a stronger brand identity.

“Hyundai was brought to this country with a value statement,” he said in an earlier interview, referring to the automaker’s arrival to the U.S. in the 1980s, when it claimed ground on the low end of the market with a single compact vehicle.

“But I’m a big believer that today modern brands have to be more than the product and the rational point of view on ‘why’ … To get better transaction prices long term, you’ve got to really have not just the value quotient, but people have to want to buy your brand for an emotional connection.”

Hyundai’s branding campaign will include “multiple touch points.”

“Launching a brand is more than broadcast television,” he said, adding that automakers sometimes try to build their brand but “don’t have enough tactical and digital executions” to make sure they hit their sales numbers.

That sometimes leads them to “go back on television and turn brand building off and turn on sales events,” Evans said.

“The theory here is if you have too many sales events happening almost every single month, you really don’t build a brand on anything more than a ‘car and value’ (proposition),” he said. “And in some cases it’s even worse, because you’re out there not just talking about the value of the car, but you’re adding ‘Hey, there’s a sale’ or a rebate or any other sales messaging on a regular basis on television—you can actually make your brand go backwards.”

Evans said Hyundai allowed him to “peek under the hood” and see the upcoming vehicle lineup during the interview process. He saw that its “product is ahead of the brand,” meaning quality, technological advances and a competitive edge are all there, but the brand’s image is somewhat lackluster.

“How do you build that brand and communicate out to customers maybe what they hadn’t thought of before, and really refresh a brand—to me that’s Hyundai’s biggest story we’ve got coming here in the next five, 10 years,” Evans said.

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