Hyundai Shifting Forward After Assurance Success

What do you do after launching one of the most innovative and effective campaigns of recent years? In Hyundai’s case, you move on to the next campaign. The carmaker, whose lose-your-job-and-return-the-car Assurance Plan helped convince many recession-addled consumers to take a flyer on a new Hyundai in 2009, this month launched its Uncensored campaign, which shows putative Hyundai customers taking test drives. The effort, via Innocean Worldwide, attempts to address preconceived notions about the brand. (Most memorable line from a test driver: “I feel so lame for spending my money on a Mercedes.”) The man behind the campaign is Chris Perry, who took over for the departing Joel Ewanick as vp, marketing in May. Perry discussed the campaign plus the somewhat improved mood of consumers this year compared to last.Brandweek: What prompted the Uncensored campaign?Chris Perry: You know, it kind of came from feedback from our dealers. And they loved the idea of testimonials. They see a lot of satisfied customers in their dealerships, and we started with “How do we get real people talking about our cars?” And we’ve seen a lot of that through all different types of brands, so we decided to take a different approach to it. Rather than current owners, we’re able to put a little spin on the testimonial campaign and use prospects.BW: It reminds me a bit of the Domino’s campaign with the switchers. Was that something you looked at?CP: No. Essentially, what we did was to set up cars in three different locations: Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. And we just let people get in them and free flow [their] comments.BW: How has the response been so far?CP: Oh, very positive. We don’t have a lot of metrics yet because [it] just started on July 5. But we spent [the week of July 19] with our dealer council, and they’re very pleased and excited about it. We’re getting a lot of good feedback from the field and consumers, so right now, we’re very excited.BW: What’s the time frame for this? Is this a summer campaign? You said there’s something different in the fall?CP: Yes. This will run July and August. And there are a couple different components to it. There’s what we call Tier 1 that we’re running from a manufacturer’s standpoint. It introduces the event, and then all the HDA’s—our [Hyundai] dealer associations—around the country are running it. Those are a little bit more retail-oriented. The dealers have an option to tag those other spots with your seven-second tag through local dealerships or a lease payment or something like that. And then we also have it featured strongly, prominently on our Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 Web sites. We have a YouTube channel. It’s youtube.com/Hyundai. And you can see the spots there. Plus, there are outtakes from these different events that we did that we cut together and put up there to enhance the exposure of this idea. So, we’re pretty excited about it.BW: What about the fall? What are you planning for that?CP: Well, in the fall, we’ll switch over. We have an all new Turbo—the Sonato Turbo—that will be introduced. We have the all new Equus that will be introduced. We have a hybrid right behind that—a Sonata Hybrid. We have a lot more product news coming in the fall, so that will follow shortly after this campaign.BW: What about the consumer mind-set right now? Is there still a lot of anxiety? Does the “Assurance” [program] hold as much allure as it did a year ago or not really?CP: Assurance is…well, it’s an interesting story for Assurance. It’s really grown in the consumers’ minds to be all those things that Hyundai provides that provides peace of mind, confidence in the brand. So, when we talked to consumers and they talked about Assurance, what comes to mind for them is our America’s Best Warranty—the 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty—our roadside assistance, our income loss protection, all those things that provide, like I said, that peace of mind, that confidence. So, yes, there is no doubt that Assurance is still playing a major role for us. But when I say Assurance, I mean all those things, not just the job loss protection that we introduced last year. BW: Right. But I talked to another marketer, Mark LaNeve at Allstate, and he said that he thought that the sort of panic of ’08 and ’09 has subsided for many consumers. Although the economic picture is by no means great right now, he feels that we’re sort of over the hump. Do you feel the same way?CP: I would say that relative to last year, yes, certainly. There’s less angst out there, but that’s still an issue. I’m going to pull it up because I just saw it today. There was an article that came out about jobs. This is from Bloomberg.com: Jobless claims in the U.S. increased more than economists forecast to 464,000. So, it’s still an issue out there. Is it as much as it was last year? No. But it is still a concern. So you couple the great products that we have, along with the value that we provide, along with America’s best warranty, along with the job loss protection—it’s a pretty compelling proposition.

Brand Marketing

Hyundai Shifting Forward After Assurance Success

Todd Wasserman

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Todd Wasserman