• by Karl Greenberg , March 9, 2007

Hyundai will vastly increase its lifestyle and Internet marketing efforts this year, as it seeks to translate its "smart thinking" mantra into efforts to engage Internet-savvy consumers.

The first such effort, and the first of its kind for Hyundai, is "Mash and Seek," an Internet promotion in which 16 randomly chosen people who have never met each other and know nothing about each other are split into teams of four that have to find one another to win four Elantra sedans.

The effort begins this week with a Web site as well as with online ads urging consumers to visit it to enter for the April 30 random drawing of the 16 names.

Kathy Faith, national manager of experiential marketing at Hyundai, says the contestants can use any means at their disposal to find the others, but the point is to generate buzz both for Hyundai and for themselves--as they try to find each other--by launching personal pages, videos, and making connections at social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook.

After the first four days, each team will get a clue, but a quiz will precede the piecemeal revelation; the team that answers the quiz first gets the clue in advance of the others.

"One of the benefits of it is that it's viral," says Faith, adding that the effort ties into the recently launched national campaign for Elantra with the theme "Think Smart."

"The only way they will be able to find these other people will be to promote themselves online. It's really about the Hyundai brand being smart--the players have to be clever to win," she says.

She says the effort will be advertised online, with the promotion getting about 10% of Hyundai's ad rotation through part of the month.

In addition to online ads, Faith says the "Mash and Seek" effort is being promoted through grass-roots initiatives, aligned with elements of the ad campaign, such as a mobile electronic billboard touring the country and visiting races, auto shows and lifestyle events such as the SXSW confab in Austin, Texas, beginning today.

"Where [the mobile effort] is going we will have teams of guerrilla marketers interacting with folks, giving them brochures that will drive them to the Web site."

She says the strategy will be to keep those who entered--but weren't chosen--just as engaged after April 30 as before, via daily quizzes for a chance to win the car.

She says the target consumer is not explicitly the young but the media savvy. "It's geared to people comfortable with computers and technology."

Hyundai, which put its account with Richards Group in review this month, currently uses no corporate tag line. The last one, "Drive your way," was phased out last year.