• by Karl Greenberg , April 7, 2015

Kia is touting its2016 version of the Sorento SUV with a new campaign on Yahoo touting the crossover as an active-lifestyle vehicle by showing people using it as such. An extension of three-month-old “The Perfect Getaway,” via AOR David & Goliath, the social and digital campaign centers on a six-episode custom content video series on Yahoo Screen. 

The series is a documentary-style “Getaway Guide” in which the camera follows real people taking the kinds of adventures that one can accomplish in a day or a weekend. In a Sorento. Besides being the getaway vehicle in the videos, the crossover is also advertised in bookend spots. One of the videos involves a pair of women, one of whom evidently had a tough year according to her friend, who vows to take her on crazy adventures in 2015. They kick things off by jumping into a Sorento and going to trapeze school. 

The omnibus campaign with Yahoo includes native ads across Yahoo properties and sponsored posts on Tumblr, per the automaker. Kia says the campaign also has a video-share component via Yahoo Splash Ads across Yahoo’s digital magazines, including Yahoo Food, Yahoo Health and Yahoo Travel. Kia will also run traditional display and video advertising across Yahoo's network, per a release about the campaign. To reach active-lifestyle types and people currently shopping for a crossover, Kia says it will use Yahoo's targeting platform across its properties.

Kia’s “The Perfect Getaway” campaign kicked off in January with in-cinema, digital, social media, and TV, the first of which was a Super Bowl spot starring Pierce Brosnan. He imagines driving a Sorento in a James Bond-style action film that his agent is pitching him. 

Maybe Kia doesn’t even need to advertise the vehicle at this point. The Korean automaker is on a major roll in the U.S., thanks in part to Sorento, the Optima compact car and Soul compact crossover. Last month, the company boasted sales of 58,771 vehicles, constituting a 7.3% lift versus March last year, and pushing Kia to its reported best-ever first quarter. The automaker sold 5,184 Sorentos last month, versus 3,571 in March, 2014, and almost 4,000 more of them in the first quarter this year than last.