• by Christine Champagne , November 29, 2007

Hyundai’s new campaign strives to bang the dents out of a battered reputation

It’s no secret that Hyundai hasn’t always had the best reputation. Initially, the Korean-made cars, which first went on sale in the U.S. in the mid-1980s, were known for their affordability. But soon enough, the vehicles acquired a reputation for unreliability and poor construction, making Hyundai the butt of jokes on late-night TV, with both David Letterman and Jay Leno taking shots at the brand, such as Leno’s assertion that filling one of the cars with gas doubles its value.

In recent years, however, Hyundai has undergone a turnaround in quality — even going as far as to back its vehicles sold in the u.s. with a confident 10-year, 100,000-mile guarantee — Hyundai cars now perform well in surveys and third-party reviews relating to reliability and safety.

A recent example: The newly-redesigned Hyundai Elantra actually bested the Mitsubishi Lancer, Nissan Sentra and Scion xB in a recent test of the four vehicles conducted by Consumer Reports.

“Their sales are pretty strong,” notes Arianne Walker, J.D. Power director of automotive media and marketing. “They’re not as strong as Honda’s and Toyota’s, but Hyundai’s doing better than some of the American brands. They’re playing the game; no question.” 

Still, while Hyundai has its devotees, the negative perceptions from the past continue to haunt the brand, presenting a marketing challenge for the automaker’s new advertising agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which landed the account earlier this year.

In fact, even when presented with positive reports about Hyundai generated by sources independent of the company, some people simply refuse to believe the reports are true, according to Goodby director of planning Matt Herrmann, who says this issue was uncovered while the agency was conducting research into consumer opinions on the brand.

“They would actually question the validity of the study,” Herrmann says. “Or if you told them [a Hyundai] had more airbags than cars in its competitive class, they’d say, ‘Well, it’s probably because they’re so unsafe you need them.’  So there is a very clear [disconnect between] the perception of the brand and the actual quality of the product. 

Given such attitudinal obstacles, Goodby structured a new marketing campaign, called Think About It, for Hyundai designed to get consumers to first “lean in, then listen,” as Herrmann puts it.

An initial three-week reframing period started late this summer with an unbranded teaser campaign that posed questions via TV, print and rich-media banner ads designed to get people thinking generally about what they should be looking for in a car. For example, one of the queries posed was, “Shouldn’t a car have more airbags than cupholders?”

All of the components of the first phase drove traffic to think-about-it.com, the microsite serving as the central hub of the campaign.

On the heels of the three-week curiosity-piquing reframing period, the reveal phase began, utilizing more detailed TV, print and banner ads to not only pose automotive-related questions but also began to associate the positive traits with the brand.

As in the first phase of the campaign, all of the components in the second phase drive traffic to think-about-it.com, now enhanced to include thought-provoking factoids, games and videos.

Asked why the microsite is the centerpiece of the campaign, Herrmann explains, “One of the values that we dictate for the brand is transparency, and you can only be so transparent in a 30-second ad or in a print spread. We wanted to present more and more data and more and more information, and the Web was the perfect choice for that.”

Also, when Goodby did some research on people who have bought Hyundai vehicles, they found that consumers’ decision making was influenced by research, and they were conducting most of that research online.

“Hyundai buyers actually index higher than other car brand buyers on Internet research,” Herrmann points out, “and they index the highest based on some studies.”

Eager to get potential new Hyundai buyers into research mode, Goodby aimed to create a Web site that not only shared information, but also provided entertainment value.

New York–based Transistor Studios and Perfect Fools, which has offices in New York and Stockholm, were hired to work on the project. Goodby gathered all of the parties involved to take part in a workshop of sorts this summer to coordinate the building of the content-dense think-about-it.com, which focuses on the aforementioned areas of design, reliability and safety.

A sampling of the content in the safety area includes a rather startling factoid — one in four Americans has fallen asleep at the wheel; a video highlighting the fact that Hyundai is the first among its competitors to make front and side airbags standard; and a “Save the Egg” game, in which players attempt to construct a vessel that will ensure an egg dropped off a building will land without splattering.

Given the copious amount of content (made up of what Goodby calls “nuggets”), a great deal of effort went into developing a functional, unique navigation that features floating content. “We were all trying to go for this sense of stream of consciousness, that you’re exploring ideas in this stream of consciousness way,” Perfect Fools partner Patrick Gardner says, “You experience one interesting thing, and then there’s other stuff you can reach out for and take a look at.”

Herrmann views the microsite and the campaign as a whole as “cerebral and pensive,” which he maintains is unique for marketing in the car category.

J.D. Power’s Walker agrees that while most carmakers are building microsites, Hyundai’s approach is different. “Most manufacturers are using microsites to feature a new model or relaunch a model as opposed to selling a concept, so this is unique in that sense,” Walker says. 

As to whether this ambitious microsite and the campaign in general can really change strongly held perceptions about Hyundai, Walker says yes. “People do change their perceptions, but it takes awhile,” according to Walker. “For example, Hyundai has done an amazing job in getting that idea of dependability and reliability up.” The company overhauled their product from one that broke down all the time, and reinforced its dependability with a 100,000-mile warranty. “So you can make a difference,” continues Walker, “but, essentially, you need to have something behind the message.” 

So, are visitors to think-about-it.com thinking about buying a Hyundai? While Herrmann could not provide specific numbers in regards to traffic to the microsite, he reports that, in the first few days of the reframe phase of the campaign, it “had dramatically more traffic than hyundaiusa.com has ever seen.”

Plans are for think-about-it.com to remain live long-term. In addition to creating and maintaining think-about-it.com, Goodby is also at work on redesigning hyundaiusa.com. “We’re reinventing the way that manufacturers’ Web sites operate, and a lot of the learning we used in creating this microsite is going to be applied to the main site,” Herrmann says, adding that the new and improved version of hyundaiusa.com should be unveiled by early next year.