Kia Motors America Inc. is preparing to tap into a “full blend” of marketing channels—including virtual reality—as it launches the Niro hybrid SUV and other vehicles scheduled to debut in the coming months.
“We know that it’s a competitive marketplace out there, and we need to stay top of mind,” said Kimberley Gardiner, the Irvine-based automaker’s newly appointed director of marketing. “Kia is a small brand, and we need to make sure that people put us on their shopping list … You’ll see some things from us next year that will really show that we are trying to connect with consumers in some new ways. We need to be more integrated, and we need to be more clever, and that’s really where our heads are at right now.”
Kia, whose broadcast and digital spending last year totaled $336.2 million, will continue its sponsorship of the National Basketball Association and Ladies Professional Golf Association. It also plans to return to the Super Bowl as an advertiser with at least one TV commercial.
The ad, still under wraps, “will be out of the ordinary,” according Gustavo Sarkis, executive creative director at David&Goliath, Kia’s advertising agency of record.
“[During the] Super Bowl there are two big games going on: one that defines who wins on the football field, and the other that defines who wins on the commercial break,” Sarkis said. “It’s a very competitive task and we are giving our best to get out there and create the most entertaining and shareable spot there could be.”
Initial news reports suggested that the Niro is likely to be featured in the commercial, but Gardiner said she’s working with David&Goliath “on a couple of different paths” and that “no matter which path we take, it will connect really nicely with the Super Bowl audience” and be augmented with “something interesting that continues the conversation into digital.”
Kia also is preparing to push its 2017 Cadenza full-size sedan, with an initial effort “heavy on digital social, and [customer relation management], and we are looking at a lot of video content,” she said. “And then we’ll have more of what you’d call a traditional launch next year.”
Other vehicles scheduled to launch in the coming months include a turbocharged Soul SX Model. Also a possibility is the GT—Kia’s first-ever sports sedan, which could be introduced to the market at the 2017 North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January.
The automaker’s marketing plans for the Niro include augmented reality, VR and mobile applications to enable “consumers to take a look around the car and learn more about it,” Gardiner said.
Kia is working with EVOX Images in Long Beach and a tech partner in South Korea on the approach for VR.
EVOX’s app for the technology gives automakers “the ability to take your showroom to your customers at malls, concerts, auto shows, or any place your customers gather,” the company said. Shoppers using the Oculus or Samsung Gear VR headset can view a car on a turntable from all sides; change the color of the vehicle’s body or interior; or sit in a driver’s seat and take it for a virtual test drive. Pricing and other information also is offered from a dropdown menu.
Another VR route Kia might take would involve developing original content to promote the vehicle. For example, EVOX created a short VR film, “Backwater,” for MINI USA featuring a vehicle heist. The auto brand, which partnered with the New York Times to distribute 1 million Google Cardboard devices, used the film to support the launch of MINI Connected, its “most advanced motoring technology.”
Kia’s parent company, Kia Motors Corp., in January created a similar VR movie that starred its Soul vehicle. In the spy flick, titled “Project Soul,” the viewer becomes a main character who gets out of a tricky situation with the help of Soul’s not-yet-available self-driving technology. It can be seen on YouTube or via the Project Soul app.
“The digital team is very, very busy—we are also working on a chatbot feature so we’ll be able to have some interesting virtual conversations with consumers who have questions about the car and are considering shopping for it,” Gardiner said, referring to Siri-like software that consumers can converse with through a messenger app.
Kia also recently started using AdWords’ click-to-message ad extension, which lets shoppers contact an advertiser via text message directly from a pay-per-click ad appearing in their messaging app or browser search results.
Challenges Ahead
Innovations in digital marketing reflect challenges Gardiner sees on the horizon for the entire auto industry.
“The customer’s interaction with the car is changing, the expectation of what car ownership means is changing, and obviously things like autonomous driving vehicles are changing how we think about the vehicles in the first place,” she said.
The goal for Kia is to “weather that storm” and “adapt and connect with consumers in different ways,” she said. “I think you have to be flexible enough, adaptable, you have to be nimble and you have to have an entrepreneurial mindset.”
Kia appears to be heading in that direction with its marketing.
“Launching a new marketing effort—whether that be an event or a new advertisement, or maybe it’s a new digital or mobile experience—it can take a lot of time to go through the process of evaluating it, planning for it, of putting together your strategy how you’re going to go to market, getting all the right people involved in it, and then actually producing the work and then releasing it,” Gardiner said. “And what I’ve seen at Kia so far is that timeframe can be very consolidated. You can envision something on a Monday, and within a few days, by Friday, you’ve got an action plan. It’s a company that can really enable you to embrace new thinking and make it happen as soon as you can. That part to me is really amazing and exciting for millennials and other people looking at automotive and thinking ‘Yeah, automotive is very traditional, it’s conservative, it’s a slow-moving industry.’ You come to Kia and you wouldn’t know that.”
Gardiner spent most of her career heading marketing efforts at Toyota Motor Sales USA and its sister brands. Part of her job was to size up the competition, and her current employer was not always on her radar.
“A few years ago, the industry didn’t look at [Kia] as a major threat—they were fairly small, their products were OK, but not anything that we were terribly concerned about,” she said. “Over the course of the last several years I watched the entire lineup be completely redesigned and thought, ‘It’s very impressive.’ They’ve got great design, great engineering, and their marketing has touched the cord with consumers who just want something fun, authentic, interesting, and they want an experience with a vehicle that’s going to meet their needs.”
