automotive

Kia Offers Alternate Endings To Super Bowl Spot Via TikTok

Kia America’s Super Bowl spot includes a unique twist. 

The automaker is offering what it is calling the first-ever Super Bowl spot that ends on TikTok.

Created by David&Goliath, the adventure-fueled 60-second spot debuted Feb. 9 during the "Today" show, which is also where General Motors launched its Super Bowl spot on Feb. 7.

A company’s decision to run a Super Bowl spot goes beyond just the day of the game, says Kia America CMO Russell Wager.

“There's a conversation that leads up to it of who's going to be in it, and then there's a conversation that will happen afterwards of like, did you see that spot,” Wager says. “So we tried to start becoming part of the conversation a little earlier rather than waiting until Sunday.”

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Kia America’s 14th Super Bowl spot features the 2023 Telluride X-Pro SUV and a Dad that just wants to make his family happy. The spot follows the adventure of his quest to retrieve a forgotten binky.

Even viewers who don’t have kids are likely to be familiar with the power of a pacifier to placate a cranky baby, Wager says.

“When you're talking to a hundred million people during the Super Bowl, you want to have a story that is relatable to the majority of them,” Wager tells Marketing Daily.

The spot shows the Dad taking a shortcut down a ski slope, through a huge drainage pipe at a construction site, into the LA River, and through the field in a packed football stadium during a game. Along the way, his story goes viral, with widespread coverage on national news and social media.

Finally, Binky Dad recovers the binky and heroically presents it to his baby, who straightway spits it out. He'd grabbed the green binky, and his daughter only likes…the blue one. As the commercial ends, Binky Dad takes off in his Telluride X-Pro once again, headed home to get the right binky.

Three alternate endings were posted Feb. 9 on the brand’s TikTok channel. They show scenarios where Binky Dad runs into even more trouble trying to get the blue binky, like watching in horror as his robot vacuum eats the blue binky.

To further extend the campaign experience, in addition to the scripted alternate endings, D&G tasked a handful of TikTok creators, including Addison Bounds (@cooking4wifey), to film their own creative endings that will go live when the spot debuts.

The commercial is set to the iconic “Gonna Fly Now,” (the theme from “Rocky”). The agency went through hundreds of other songs before landing on the "Rocky" theme, says David Angelo, founder and creative chairman of David&Goliath.

The goal was to create not just a Super Bowl spot but an experience that lives on beyond the game, he says.

Additional campaign assets include 30-second, 15-second and 6-second cutdowns along with digital and social media extensions.

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