Ad Age spends a day with Hyundai—yes, Hyundai
Our reporter tags along on automaker’s Uncensored driving event and watches the converts roll in
; BY MICHAEL BUSH mbush@adage.com
DESPITE A COOL and breezy Friday
morning in late August, Blake Kanickij is
working up a sweat as he scrubs a
portable floor in the parking lot of
Citizens Bank Ballpark on his hands and
knees. “Getting a good day is the hardest
part,” said the project manager for Jack
Morton, in between laboring to remove
scuff marks left by past visitors and
instructing local union laborers laying a
rubberized floor. “Managing the people
and the process is easy.”
And, in fact, the 50-person team he’s
choreographing on behalf of Interpublic
Group of Cos.’ experiential marketing
agency is making it look deceptively
simple to turn one of the stadium’s main
parking lots into the fourth stop on the
10-city “Hyundai Uncensored” national
tour. This leg of the tour, held at the
home of the Philadelphia Phillies and its
fans, aims to turn locals into Hyundai
fans by putting them behind the wheel
of a Hyundai Sonata, Toyota Camry or
Honda Accord, taking them through
their paces with a course consisting of
hairpin turns, evasive maneuvers, high-
speed straightaways and conditions that
mimic icy roads.
Less than 24 hours before consumers
start showing up, the scene doesn’t look
like much of anything. The to-do list,
which must be completed by the end of
the day, includes: unloading two car carriers and two Hyundai-wrapped shipping
containers filled with furniture, flooring
and electronics; erecting tents; securing
electricity; anchoring the tents with
weights; putting up Hyundai signs and
building an elaborate driving course
using 14 professional drivers from
Precision Dynamics International, a producer of automotive experiential-mar-keting programs. That alone involves
laying out more orange cones than it
seems possible to count.
As Mr. Kanickij and his Jack Morton
cohorts, Dan Beilke, another project manager and tour manager Art Hanson, shuttle back and forth between the main staging area carrying boxes or maneuvering
forklifts, Doc McKinney, head of the PDI
team, slowly drives a car through the
course. Via walkie-talkie, he instructs his
team to reconfigure cones in order to
make the turns tighter or the turning circle, where consumers will test the car’s
turning radius, a tad smaller. PDI drivers
will accompany consumers while they
drive the course.
Mr. McKinney, who has worked as a
consultant and stunt driver in a
Hollywood film and in TV commercials,
has been doing these programs with
Hyundai for the past six years and said he
has witnessed firsthand the impact these
events have on consumers and the brand.
“When I first started working with
Hyundai it was clear that consumers just
thought of Hyundai as a throwaway car
and one that they didn’t give any serious
consideration to,” he said, while test driving the course. “I have seen that perception change 180 degrees over the years.
And, in my opinion, it’s things like this
that are responsible for that. Consumers
can drive these cars in a hassle-free envi-
HERE’S THE SETUP: Ateamcaptainedby JackMortonmakes thecomplicated undertakinglook deceptivelyeasy.
MICHAEL BUSH
MICHAEL BUSH MICHAEL BUSH
10
NUMBER OF CITIES THE
H YUNDAI UNCENSORED
TOUR IS HITTING
10,000
ronment and in conditions you won’t get
in a road test with a dealer. No one is in
sales mode here forcing them to sign or
buy anything.”
Of course, the idea isn’t just to let con-
sumers experience the cars but to evan-
gelize about them, and Hyundai gives
them plenty of ways to do that. After the
test drives, they are encouraged to linger
in a gleaming white lounge under a huge
Hyundai-branded tent and listen to
music, drink Starbucks frappuccinos and
use iPads available to them—hopefully to
spread the gospel about Hyundai.
“This place is wired to let consumers
tell their friends about the experience,”
said Jaime Cabrera, creative director at
Jack Morton and designer of the space.
“The iPads are loaded with Twitter and
Facebook, and you can check in on
Foursquare when you get here. We set
this up so they will hang around, talk to
us and other consumers about Hyundai,
have a [frappuccino] and listen to music
after they test drive the cars.”
They can also take a less private
approach by entering a Sonata equipped
with a video camera, where they can close
the door and rave, complain, or, as Mr.
Cabrera recalled, do what one excited
attendee did on the tour’s last stop did and
make up a song about the driving experience they just had.
Under former marketing chief Joel
Ewanick and his No. 2 Chris Perry, both
of whom have decamped to General
Motors, Hyundai gained steam in the
auto world with clever advertising, a
media strategy to buy big-event programming like the Super Bowl and a
groundbreaking Buyer’s Assurance program that allowed consumers to return a
new Hyundai if they lost their income.
But Monique Morin Kumpis, Hyundai’s
manager-experiential marketing and
strategic alliances, said there’s no substitute for getting behind the wheel.
“Ad campaigns tell a story but there’s
nothing there for a consumer to touch
and feel,” she said. “The key is letting
consumers draw their own conclusions
but to do that they need to have the
Hyundai experience. This is beyond
tents and cones. With everything they
can do here it becomes an experience and
the more we can get them driving our
cars and telling their friends about us,
the better.”
NUMBER OF PEOPLE
AT TENDING H YUNDAI
UNCENSORED EVENTS TO
DATE
363,491
NUMBER OF HYUNDAIS SOLD
IN THE U.S. LAST YEAR
120
NUMBER OF MILES EACH
SONATA DRIVES AT EVERY
TOUR STOP
Ms. Kumpis said she has seen consumers, at other tour stops, jump out of
Sonatas and claim they were going to
purchase one that very day.
While that didn’t happen on this day,
at least not in the first few hours of the
event, it was clear that the experience had
significantly shifted the mindset of some
of those in attendance.
Jack Morton estimates that nearly
1,000 people attended the event over the
weekend. The lines for the test drives
were always full and most of those who
drove the cars were eager to get on line for
the video car and talk about the experience. Copies of their videos are sent to
them and Hyundai also edits the videos
for a reel it posts on its Facebook page.
(Some of the footage they are compiling from this tour will eventually be used
in future commercials, but for now it is all
being posted on Facebook. Similar footage
used in prior TV spots came from a very
small mall tour Hyundai did for Sonata
earlier in the year.)
One couple waiting on line to shoot a
video said: “Hyundai should do this
course outside all their dealerships and
they would sell a car every time.”
Mike, a 40-something Toyota owner
who was also waiting to make a video
about the experience, said he is in the
market for a new car but hates dealerships
and likes the “low-key” atmosphere of
the Uncensored event.
He said his 12-year-old Camry is in
the shop every other week and that the
test drive he just finished is forcing him to
reconsider his longstanding allegiance to
Toyota. “After this and all the issues
Toyota has had, I am seriously considering purchasing a Hyundai now.”
