• Brandweek, Monday, November 27, 2006 12:15 PM

Almost a thousand 2007 Kia Rondo crossover vehicles are being delivered to dealers in the U.S., but the Korean automaker is being strangely silent about the launch. An online search for the vehicle pulls up nothing official from the company, including no mention on the automaker's own Web site, www.kia.com. Instead, over the next 30 days, there will merely be some direct mail to targeted consumers, a presence on several search engines, and hopefully, some buzz. No print ads or broadcast spots are scheduled until the car is officially "out" in February.

The Rondo has a base price of around $16,000, and a target demographic of young singles and couples with a household income of $75,000 and up. Soft launches are generally the domain of luxury carmakers, who have already offered a particular model in other countries and place a model in the showroom to gauge--or garner--interest. "We are doing this soft launch intentionally, piece by piece rather than with a big bang, in order to get some word-of-mouth going," says Ian Beavis, vice president of marketing at Kia.

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