• by Karl Greenberg , February 26, 2010

Here's a problem some automakers would love to have: The voiceover talent in a whole raft of its national TV ads for a new car -- set to air during the Academy Awards on March 7, of which they are also official sponsor -- belongs to an actor who's up for an Oscar.

If you're good with voices, you know which automaker has this "good news/bad news" conundrum. The voiceover talent in Hyundai Motor America's biggest campaign to date for its most important vehicle yet -- the Sonata -- is Jeff Bridges, who has been nominated for his portrayal of a grizzled, sodden, ex-country star in "Crazy Heart."

Joel Ewanick, Hyundai's VP of marketing, says the Fountain Valley, Calif.-based company wouldn't have wanted to step on Bridges' Oscar moment in any case, but it's a moot point because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn't allow an advertiser to run ads during the ceremony within 30 minutes of the appearance of a presenter or nominee who is part of the ad.

But Ewanick says the company had no intention of just pulling out. "We had to clear that time, clear the whole show [of ads with Bridges' voice]. Since we are running eight spots, we saw it would be hard to do a work-around when his nomination comes up." Hyundai got seven other actors recommended by Bridges and his agent to be the voiceovers. "Because it's the Academy Awards, we thought we would stay with that theme; we went through lists of his friends and got recommendations."

The ads now use the voices of Kim Basinger (an Academy Award winner); Richard Dreyfuss (Academy Award for "The Goodbye Girl" and one-time voice of Honda); David Duchovny of "X Files" fame; Catherine Keener; Michael Madsen; Martin Sheen and Mandy Patinkin.

Chris Perry, head of Hyundai's U.S. advertising and marketing communications, says the company is not going to do special marketing around the switch. "It's a subtle thing. Jeff has done a really good job of carrying our tone and attitude, so each of them try to emulate that tone in their own way," he says. "And people who are 'inside' or are familiar with actors' voices and roles might get it; we might put something on Facebook asking questions about the voiceover work. We will keep it viral and let it spread on its own."

Ewanick says the decision not to make anything bigger of the changes and new voices wasn't immediate. "We went around and around with it, but really, we don't want this to be about the voiceover; if it makes people to pay attention a little more, that's great -- but we will not be heavy-handed about it."

Perry says while this year's involvement with the Awards is solely TV advertising, next year Hyundai may have fleets of its first true luxury car, Equus, shuttling attendees about.

The marketers say their big-event marketing program is paying off and that they have gotten big awareness and purchase-interest numbers from advertising on the Super Bowl. "We are seeing traffic on our Web site now [that is] double the traffic we got on last year's Super Bowl," he says. "Our only issue has been trying to increase the speed of our servers and thus the speed on which people can turn pages on our site. The average turn rate now is a second and a half. We are trying to speed that up."

He says over the past 14 days Hyundai has gotten the same boost in numbers of people coming to Hyundai's Web site to get quotes and vehicle information as the automaker got in the 44 days around last year's "Cash for Clunkers" program.