• by Tanya Gazdik , February 2, 2018

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler stars in Kia’s Super Bowl spot for its Stinger sports car. 

The 60-second spot from David + Goliath titled “Feel Something Again,” shows Tyler at an old abandoned racetrack. With the familiar notes of “Dream On” playing backward, Tyler looks as though he’s about to race the Stinger against another legend, two-time Formula One and Indianapolis 500 champion Emerson Fittipaldi.

After a moment of reflection, rather than driving the car forward, Tyler takes the car backward around the track, in reverse. When he comes to a stop, he finds himself in the early 1970s, a young rock star in his prime, at a moment when he felt most alive. The spot ends with the on-screen text “Feel Something Again.”

“We chose Steven Tyler because like the Stinger, he is a challenger brand himself with an ageless, audacious spirit,” David + Goliath founder and chairman David Angelo tells Marketing Daily. “He represents the ideal combination of style, youthful vigor and timelessness — and unlike any rock legend, he is one of the greats that make me feel something. Just like when I drove the Stinger for the first time — and trust me, I test drove several similar cars — the Stinger hands down made me feel ageless.”

While the expectation would be to use humor, the agency purposefully chose a more serious and epic tone to properly reflect the Stinger’s persona and where the Kia brand is going, Angelo says.

The agency felt pressure to create a spot that would be as well received as its previous award-winning Super Bowl efforts for Kia.

“One of the biggest challenges was finding a rock-and-roll celebrity who was brave enough to not only agree to the concept but trust our ability to recreate the image of his younger self,” Angelo says. “Needless to say, it was quite nerve-wracking. You want to make sure at the end of the day that you are doing justice to the brand and also to the celebrity’s brand.”'

D&G worked with Nicolai Fuglsig of MJZ, director of “12 Strong,” to give the spot an epic, cinematic, almost haunting, tone. One of the biggest challenges was authentically re-creating the 25-year-old version of Tyler, Angelo says. 

“We had to get that absolutely right,” he says. “Fortunately, thanks to the amazing artists at the Mill, we were able to get the glowing approval of Steven, his daughter, friends and a handful of rockers who know him best.”

Human, an L.A.-based music company, and Steven Tyler worked together to create an original music composition that gradually transforms into Tyler’s ‘Dream On’ — a song about the passage of time.

The driving-in-reverse concept not only hearkens back to the spirit of youth in both Tyler and Kia, but it’s also a change of course for the brand, which is proving to buck the conventions of the auto industry at every turn.

The Stinger Super Bowl campaign started with the 15-second “Fittipaldi” online teaser Jan. 25. A 30-second launch spot, “The Rise,” will go live in broadcast during the Super Bowl pre-game. The 60-second “Feel Something Again” was posted on YouTube Feb. 1 and will air during the third quarter of the game. Then, beginning Feb. 6, a 30-second spot titled “What Every Racer Needs” will begin airing to sustain the campaign.

Kia also included a surprise in the spot to compel people to engage with the brand via social media. Inspired by the legendary use of “backmasking,” a term for hiding secret messages in ’70s rock songs, Tyler included a message of his own in the spot. People who watch it on YouTube can hear something garbled but will only make out the actual message when watching the spot in reverse, which will be provided on Kia’s channel. Consumers are invited to tweet the hidden message on Twitter.  

“While everyone is trying to one-up each other pre-super bowl, we took a different approach,” Angelo says. “We wanted to keep people’s attention post-Super Bowl. Which is why we added a cool social activation component to engage them with the brand after the game.”