Genesis, the luxury brand owned by Hyundai, will make its Super Bowl advertising debut with an ad starring Chrissy Teigen and John Legend.
The ad will launch Genesis’ first SUV, the GV80, as well as a new brand campaign called “Young Luxury.”
Genesis is the youngest luxury automaker, said the brand’s North America CEO Mark Del Rosso. So, he suggested in a statement, “Why not act our age and have a little fun?”
The choice of Teigen and Legend embodied the more humorous approach the brand was looking for. The married duo “best represent the kind of pure honesty and approachability that old luxury never had,” said Bob Rayburn, executive creative director of Genesis. “Most luxury advertising acts like, once your income reaches a certain level, your sense of humor gets surgically removed.”
In two teasers released today, the couple attends a high-class event where Teigen makes a faux pas while Legend looks on with either mild annoyance or thinly veiled amusement.
The first teaser, which is 30 seconds long, features a towering oyster bar that crashes to the ground when Teigen takes one of the mollusks off the pile. She immediately turns around to address the full room of very posh, snobby-looking partygoers: “That was not me, that was John Legend, the singer, not me, some random girl, that was John Legend.”
Legend, rather unconvincingly, looks offended. Teigen bends down to grab one of the oysters off the floor because she’d “hate to see them go to waste.”
The second spot looks to be set at the same glitzy gathering, and a man—presumably one of the hosts—explains to Teigen and Legend that the ice sculpture on display was brought in from the Arctic. Teigen, who is crunching on something the entire time, tells him, “Well, I brought these crackers in from my purse. So whoop-de-doo.”
The nonchalance and self-deprecation with which Teigen approaches the upscale event plays right into her playful, off-the-cuff brand. In November, Teigen was named Adweek’s 2019 Brand Visionary for weaving her personality through work in TV, books, products and endorsement deals in a way that has earned her 12.3 million followers on Twitter alone.
Genesis’ 60-second spot for Super Bowl 2020 was produced by the brand’s agency of record, Innocean USA. It will air during the second quarter.
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