Kia Motors Corp., fresh off MTV’s stage, is now rolling with the YouTube crowd.
The Seoul, South Korea-based car manufacturer—whose U.S. operations are based in Irvine—has signed on as the sole presenting sponsor of the online video channel’s inaugural music award show.
The event, dubbed “YouTube Music Awards Presented by Kia,” will feature Eminem, Lady Gaga and Arcade Fire as a lineup of acts that’s likely to attract the younger, digitally savvy audience.
“As a founding partner of the YouTube Music Awards, Kia has the opportunity to tap into the world’s largest online music destination and a new media property that aligns well with our brand’s youthful spirit as well as our marketing pillars of music, pop culture and connected life,” said Dave Schoonover, manager of digital marketing for Kia Motors America.
The 90-minute awards show will be streamed live on YouTube’s Spotlight Channel on Nov. 3. The broadcast will be ad-free, but the concert venue in New York and accompanying events in Brazil, Moscow, Seoul and London will contain Kia branding such as product placement, according to Chelsea Maughan, YouTube’s communication manager.
Show highlights will be posted online in follow-up videos, which will contain Kia-related advertising.
The company is spreading the word about the awards show through its social media outlets by asking its fans to name their favorite artist this year.
Kia’s marketing budget was $199 million in the first half of 2013, up $10 million from the same period last year, according to New York-based industry tracker Kantar Media.
The price of the one-night-deal sponsorship of the music awards was not disclosed. Longer-term deals for other YouTube sponsorships run in the $4 million-to-$6 million range annually, according to AdWeek’s estimates.
Tokyo-based Toyota Motor Corp., for example, is sponsoring this year’s “moms-related” group of YouTube channels for $10 million, while General Motors Co.’s sponsorship of YouTube’s automotive channel cost $5 million.
Digital media has played a pivotal role in how Kia connects with its customers, according to Soon-Nam Lee, the automaker’s vice president of marketing.
The company has more than 250 social media profiles that “constitute a reach of some 1.4 billion people who are having more than 300,000 Kia-related conversations daily in the form of comments, sharing, postings and mentions.”
The company’s brand-building efforts revolve around “A Different Beat,” a marketing concept that “embodies three core brand characteristics: vibrant, distinctive and reliable.”
The focused branding approach has helped Kia gain “cutting-edge leadership” in the music market, with initiatives such as sponsorship of the Vans Warped Tour and the MTV Music Awards, as well as ads for Kia Soul that featured Lady Gaga’s “Applause” and the hamster characters that have become familiar to TV and YouTube viewers alike.
The efforts have helped Kia increase its brand value to $619 million, 15% over the last year, according to New York-based marketing consultancy Interbrand’s annual list of the top 100 brands in the world. Kia ranked No. 83 on this year’s list, which was published last week. Toyota Motor Corp. is in the No. 10 spot with a $35.3 billion brand value.
The music awards will not be the first time the automaker is collaborating with YouTube. Kia was the automotive sponsor of the 2013 VidCon, a gathering of YouTube creators and online video fans held in Anaheim this summer.
