When 90 million Americans tuned into the Super Bowl in February, they were looking for an escape in more ways than just watching the game and downing a few beers. In January, employers had slashed 598,000 workers from their payrolls, wages were sinking, unemployment had hit 7.6 percent and people -- everywhere -- were suddenly afraid to participate in the most American of activities: shopping. So it was probably no wonder that most of the ads that fans would watch during the big game kept things light and took the humorous route. People had heard enough bad news. Most brands elected to either skirt the subject of the recession, or ignore it completely.

A rare, 30-second exception opened with footage of a teeming interstate and a contemplative-looking young woman at the wheel of her car. "Whenever you buy a new car, you have to sign a contract," intoned actor Jeff Bridges. "But what about the company selling it to you?" A few shots of highways and dashboards later came the kicker: "Finance or lease any new Hyundai, and if you lose your income in the next year, you can return it with no impact on your credit. Sound too good to be true? Come and see us and we'll put it in writing for you."

As Super Bowl ads go, the spot wasn't much to look at-no celebrity endorsers, no computer-generated effects, no big-budget action sequences. It felt more like an ad for an insurance company. In terms of its marketing ambitions, however, Hyundai's "Assurance" spot was part of something very big. In the world of the auto industry, in fact, it was earthshaking.

It was the sound of a once-obscure brand jockeying for the big time.

Hyundai Motor America, whose parent corporation is headquartered in South Korea, had already made significant headway in turning around the perception that its cars were inferior to Japanese brands. It had risen to become the fifth largest auto manufacturer in the world. Heck, it had even managed to teach a large share of Americans to pronounce its name (rhymes with "Sunday," as its ads once said, even though some Christian groups took offense at the usage). But as the North American unit and its creative agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, watched the beginnings of economic catastrophe and the deteriorating fortunes of automotive rivals, they sensed an opportunity.

With Detroit's Big Three on the ropes and even some Japanese nameplates suffering, millions of would-be car buyers were suddenly brand-less. Hyundai saw no reason why it should not be their new brand.

"The last time a company like Hyundai could build brand and steal market share was almost 40 years ago," says Joel Ewanick, vp of marketing for Hyundai Motor America. "And before that, you had to go back to 1930, when General Motors stole the leadership position away from Ford." The Hyundai Assurance Program -- the subject of the Super Bowl spot -- would be the company's first attempt at that steal. It would follow the effort soon after with Hyundai Assurance Plus.

Now, four months into its ambitious plans, Hyundai is just beginning to find out exactly how effective it's all been. Not that Assurance is the sum total of Hyundai's efforts to load up the trunk with more market share. At a time when industry watchers are predicting that General Motors (assuming it survives) will have to pare down to a mere handful of models, Hyundai will introduce three new car models in 2010 and seven in 2011.

There's also another important positioning change for the company: the new Genesis nameplate is a clear bid for presence in the luxury category. "We're well poised with hybrids, all new models, really fresh and aggressive styling," says Ewanick, whose team is working with a new creative agency, World Marketing Group, on a comprehensive marketing plan to build momentum behind the new wheels.

It's both an exciting and daunting period for Ewanick and the automotive brand he's trying to grow and redefine, but the marketer says that this is the right time for Hyundai to make its play. "Traditionally, brands that have taken advantage of down times like this have done well coming out on the other side, when the market starts to come back," Ewanick says. "The companies that have done the best at it have a really aggressive plan, with great new products."

Plan and products, Hyundai has, but only time will tell just how far it'll take the brand.



Buying Assurance
So far, industry observers say, the Assurance proposition has already given the car company a kind of marketing turbocharge. The promo that first emerged in its Super Bowl ad was "a stroke of genius," in the view of Todd Turner, president of Car Concepts, a brand-image and auto-research consultancy in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Hyundai's initial offer-that unemployed people could return their cars, no strings attached, within a year of purchase-was soon augmented by "Assurance Plus," whose spots debuted during the Academy Awards on Feb. 22. The Plus offer took it to the next level by actually handing out money: If consumers buy or lease a Hyundai before the end of April and they subsequently lose their jobs, "we'll make your payments for three months while you get back on your feet," Hyundai's site explains.

The offers sounded awfully good to car buyers. According to Ewanick, some 30,000 consumers have taken advantage of the Assurance Program to date. Hyundai's car sales rocketed 14 percent in January, versus January 2008. And February sales were only off a hair in comparison with the same month last year: minus 1.5 percent.

Arguably, those would be respectable figures even if the economy weren't in the tank. Compare them to how Hyundai's competition has been doing, and it's apparent that Hyundai has indeed moved into the passing lane. According to figures supplied by Car Concepts, year-over-year January and February sales for GM and Chrysler were down around 50 percent. As Turner puts it, "It's kind of shocking when you see Hyundai coming out in positive territory."

According to observers, Hyundai is reaping the rewards of taking a marketing risk, starting with its Super Bowl spot. Instead of tiptoeing around consumers' anxieties with predictable messages about quality and value, Hyundai laid it all out on the table: If you buy a car and lose your job, there's a way out. The messaging is "founded on the fact that people see Hyundai as a value proposition," says Wes Brown, a partner of Iceology, a brand-engagement consultancy in Los Angeles that specializes in the auto industry.  "[Hyundai took] that image and layered over it the message, 'We'll protect you in hard times.' It's completely credible."

Michael Robinet, vp of global vehicle forecasts at CSM Worldwide, Northville, Mich., adds that Hyundai's current marketing represents the wisdom it's gained from earlier experiences with consumer fear and suspicion -- and not of the economy, but of Hyundai itself. A decade ago, Robinet remembers, "Consumers had a fear about the quality of Hyundai cars, so [Hyundai] put in a 10-year warranty." The company's current Assurance offer, he adds, seems to be cut from that same cloth: "Hyundai is very good at calming people's fears."



A haute Hyundai?
The coming months will tell if Hyundai is good at some other things, too. While offering a supporting shoulder to the unemployed was a marketing risk that seems to have paid off quite well, it will take more to move the Hyundai brand to a more choice space in the auto lot of customer perceptions.

Hyundai has the goods ready, however. While the company seems to be keeping its marketing strategy close to the vest, the carmaker is clearly moving toward billing itself as a more upscale brand. For example, inside and out, its 2009 Sonata looks more Audi than Hyundai. Designers broke a sweat on upmarket touches such as a concave hood, chrome accents and what the company terms strong, Z-lined, body-to-bumper interfaces. Inside, "Hyundai designers have thoroughly revamped the cockpit to create the ambiance of an upscale, premium sedan," according to the literature. In a first, the 2009 model will also feature a "cocoa brown" interior as an option. (Incidentally, cocoa brown cockpits are signature touches of both Bentleys and Porsches.)

It bears noting that, prior to joining Hyundai, Ewanick held posts at both Porsche and Lexus. Though Hyundai is quite obviously a different set of wheels, it'll no doubt benefit from that kind of luxury experience, especially given how hawkish the company is by comparison. "Hyundai is by far the most aggressive and forward-looking company I've worked with," Ewanick says. "Every month, every day, every weekend, we're tracking sales like I've never seen them tracked before."

Another first for the Sonata-and for Hyundai -- will be a hybrid model, which will be the automaker's first production-version gas/electric vehicle in the U.S. The company previously made noises about entering the hybrid market, but those turned out to be backfires. Now, management has committed to the Sonata Hybrid's appearance in the 2010 model year.

However, there's no stronger evidence of Hyundai's bid for the high-end consumer than its 2010 Genesis Coupe, which will debut this spring. Shown first as a concept car at the 2007 L.A. Auto Show, the Genesis seems intended to put competing luxury nameplates on notice. The bigger of its two engine choices is an all-aluminum, 306-horsepower, 3.8-liter V6, and the press kit's description of its body styling sounds more like a Hollywood movie sex scene than South Korean sedan: "The Genesis Coupe's rocker panels are drawn close to the ground making the bodysides extra thick and the daylight opening thin, allowing the wheels to be slammed up into bulging fenders."

In a statement, Eric Stoddard, senior creative designer at the Hyundai Design Center in Irvine, Calif., remarked "the mission for Genesis Coupe was to create a pure performance car with a design that would capture the imagination of hardcore automotive enthusiasts." With a MSRP of $25,750, the Genesis is no economy car. Pricewise, it's on par with the 2009 Acura TSX, which lists for $29,160.

Just a few years ago, luxury ambitions would have seemed laughable for a brand like Hyundai, which had its hands full simply convincing the public that its cars would start.

Hyundai's first U.S. model year was 1987. There was a recession in the offing back then, too, and the budget-friendly Excel swept the industry. That year, 261,392 of the subcompacts drove off the lots, suddenly making the newcomer brand No. 7 among the country's top-selling automobiles.

But sales stalled when Hyundai's marketing content didn't mature. "The message when the car first went on sale was that Hyundai was a low-priced, $5,000 car," evp Ron Hayden said in an interview at the time. "That was the right way to go to establish a beachhead. But after one year, the company should have changed from just promoting a 'cheap car' to promoting one with value for the money." Hyundai, he said, "rode the pony too long."

Make that a donkey. The Excel was actually a hopelessly outdated design that Hyundai had bought from Mitsubishi. The anemic engine included a four-barrel carburetor, which had already been rendered obsolete by the fuel injector. The Excel's flimsy engineering and construction quickly became legend. Tidbit: "Hey," one driver asked another, "Did you know that the Hyundai Excel has a fully independent suspension system? The front end goes one way and the rear end goes another." Hyundai's brand image hit bottom when, one night, David Letterman quipped that if you wanted to frighten the hell out of astronauts in space, all you had to do was stick a Hyundai logo on the space shuttle's control panel.



You've come a long way, buggy
Times have changed. "Hyundai Motor Co. has become an engineering powerhouse," Turner says. "They're building and designing cars as good as the world's best. They've had almost a fanatical focus on quality." But now that Hyundai seems to have won the trust of consumers again, it faces a new marketing challenge as it sets out to win greater market share and move its brand image a few notches higher in the minds of consumers.

Ewanick would not reveal details on how Hyundai's sleek new models will be marketed, but it seems clear that he'll continue to pursue the theme started with the Assurance spots -- portraying Hyundai as a smart, mature brand that's also savvy to consumer needs in the current economy. "As the year goes on, we'll start to see an unfolding of more of what our [brand strategy] plans are," Ewanick says. "You'll start to feel this tonality in attitude ... of being a caring and thoughtful brand. We know consumers are attracted to brands with a deeper purpose."

Before that unfolding begins, Ewanick has some in-house marketing matters to clean up. Last September Goodby, Silverstein was served notice that it was losing the Hyundai Motor America account. (IPG's Initiative, which picked up the Hyundai/Kia business in January 2008, continues to handle media chores.) In May, Goodby will slide over and let World Marketing Group take the wheel. WMG will be key in building the overall marketing strategy when it takes creative control in the U.S. In the corporation's latest annual report (2007), WMG is listed as a wholly own unit of Hyundai (in other countries, WMG works with Hyundai divisions under the name Innocean). But don't call WMG an "in-house agency," Ewanick says. "In agency parlance, that's a bad word."

Good word or no, David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., says he's not surprised that Hyundai is transitioning to WMG, because it fits the mindset of corporations based in South Korea. "They like to control the game," he says.

Ewanick denies press reports that he's finding it tough going to get strong candidates to fill out the WMG team of some 40 people dedicated to the North American division. And he also denies reports that the crossover has been delayed. Original plans called for a transition to WMG two years from now, he says. But the pace was stepped up so that WMG could be involved in all the new promotions up ahead.

Ewanick remains enthusiastic about the candidates WMG is attracting. "A lot of people look at Hyundai as a really outstanding opportunity," he says. "They find what's happening to Hyundai to be analogous to what happened to the Japanese big three when they hit their big sales and brand spurts in the '70s and '80s. People want to be involved in that, and what could be the next really great brand."

When he does find all those people, one thing's sure: They'll be very busy. While car and truck makers have throttled back on their overall ad spend by 7 percent in the five years between 2003 and 2008, Hyundai's spending has floored it -- up a blurring 38 percent for the same period (see charts, pages 8, 10). And even though Hyundai's overall media spend fell between 2007 and 2008, its January spending on TV time rose from $19 million in 2008 to $25 million this year. During this year's Super Bowl, Hyundai ranked third among all advertisers based on minutes of exposure; its Assurance and Genesis messages were what viewers were being exposed to.

Going forward, Robinet notes that Hyundai's portfolio of brands is very focused. "They didn't spend a lot of money on full-sized pickups," he says. "In fact, they didn't spend any money on them. They didn't take their eye off the ball of what their value equation was. They've gone into the luxury field with the Genesis. That is a very calculated move to allow them to slowly gain better brand image and move up-market." Robinet concludes: "Hyundai, in many respects, is trying to move in the same direction as our Japanese friends."



Bumps in the road
As the Japanese will tell you, that's not always easy. Even though most consumers consider the Acura (made by Honda) and the Lexus (made by Toyota) to be luxury cars, they've come to define a niche that a number of analysts have termed "near luxury" -- fancy, sure, but never quite attaining the true cachet of gold-plated brands like Mercedes-Benz. Then there's the lesson of the VW Phaeton. Introduced in 2002 to go head-to-head with German luxury plates like Audi and BMW, the Phaeton-despite its four-zone climate control and "piano lacquer" accents-could never quite get past the fact that it was still a Volkswagen. VW sold 1,433 Phaetons in 2004, 820 in 2005, and took them off the lot in '06.

Another potentially risky move ahead is the introduction of an all-new hybrid Sonata at the tail end of 2010. "That's the first hybrid that Hyundai will have in the U.S., and we'll certainly look to see how well that does," notes  Hyundai rep Chris Hosford. "We think it's important technology, but we want to make sure there's a demand for it."

That demand thing could be the problem. Generally speaking, it's high gasoline prices that drive consumers' interest in buying hybrids. When the price goes back down -- as it has, dramatically, since last summer -- sales of hybrid cars tend to follow. Toyota Priuses that dealers couldn't keep on the lot back when gas was $4 a gallon are now sitting around with $1,000 rebates taped to their windshields. Plus, hybrid technology remains expensive, and that's a tough sell in an economy as stagnant as this one.

While Hyundai's Assurance program has done much to assuage jittery buyers in this stagnant economy, there's a certain risk to the marketing strategy, too. Calming fears with a give-back promotion can be viewed as "a cheap promotional trick," explains Alan Siegel, chairman and CEO of strategic branding company Siegel+Gale, New York and Los Angeles. "But customers have to feel pretty good about Hyundai's promotion. Here's a company that's willing to give them a shot. And if it doesn't work out, and they have to return the car, they're not penalized. Their credit isn't hurt."

The wisdom of Hyundai's risk has been proven by a metric even more impressive than customer counts: copycat competitors. "We thought we'd get 90 days of clear sailing and, at that point, we'd probably have other car companies emulating the process and the idea," says Ewanick, noting that AutoNation, a large dealership company that sells brands from several manufacturers, has already debuted a similar promo. More recently, both GM and Ford have rolled out assurance plans of their own.

Finally, critics say that Ewanick and his team still need to deal with a lingering perception problem about the Hyundai brand. Observers say it still hasn't been completely overcome and that it could take another five years for Hyundai to reach pricing parity with other manufacturers.

Ewanick and his team will be doing their best to make that happen by further enhancing the brand's image. As Ewanick puts it: "The quality improvements have outpaced perception of the brand." He says Americans don't "realize the commitment Hyundai has in the U.S.," noting that with the advent of Hyundai's plant in Alabama three years ago, the company employs 40,000 Americans and makes half its cars in the U.S. "If they're not aware of it, they're going to be aware of it soon," he promises.

Who knows? In a recession as bad as this, Hyundai's reminding consumers that it's creating jobs might end up being its smartest marketing tactic of them all.