Most of you would have noticed the "Which Hyundai R U" ad campaign banners running on many websites and blogs, including this one. It is not just a local effort but is actually part of a global effort by parent company Hyundai Motor Co (HMC). One of the parent company HMC's initiative for this year is to actually increased ad spending despite the on-going economic downturn and also to be more innovative in their marketing. HMC is following a typical advertiser's mantra - when others are cutting, you spend more on advertising and reap the rewards when the market picks up.
Locally, the local distributor of Hyundai vehicles Hyundai-Sime Darby started one of those "Snap-N-Win" contest offering a grand prize of a trip to Europe.
I can't help but noticing that this is one of those marketing efforts that looked good on paper but not enough thought is given on it and the end of the day, I doubt if it was money well spent at all.
Look at some of the photos submitted - some of these were obviously taken off the Internet, one even had China registration plate and is a left hand drive model. There should be a moderator to identify and remove these disqualified images.
Oh dear...
It would have been so much better if the contestants were asked to include a caption to the photos as well. Now the gallery is just filled with pictures after pictures, some of them are of really horrible looking souped up cars with tacky after-market parts. And I am not too sure what exactly is the story behind them or what was the photographer's idea / message? Shouldn't the objective of such a campaign is to build the brand profile? But all we are seeing is a gallery of poorly shot pictures with a Hyundai car in them. How different is this from what the public currently think of Hyundai cars on the road? Cars have an intrinsic appeal to them, people buy them not only for transport but also because they want to make their life better, and to make them feel better. Why not tell the story of how some people's Hyundai have somehow made their life better, how was the car being part of their life? Any car can tell that story, from a couple's first Kancil to high school student's first driving lesson in a Datsun.
Wouldn't it be better if the contest is about making a short video shot using a video-camera cellphone and a Hyundai car? Nokia did one such contest about a year ago. I also remember many years ago, the former DaimlerChrysler Malaysia held a short story writing contest on their memories of a Mercedes-Benz, I remember one was involving a Mercedes-Benz lorry! Nissan is now doing a similar thing with the "I'm Nissan Crazy" campaign.
But the problem with Nissan's campaign is that the testimonies sound like thinly disguised corporate advertisement and they all only feature the current latest models carried by ETCM. Companies and creative agencies need to realise that people, especially the Web 2.0 generation are increasingly suspicious of corporate sponsored endorsement. I read through I am Nissan CRA2Y "Real life Real stories" section and I don't find anything particularly "real" about them. Some of them have so many references to Edaran Tan Chong. Does anyone think real people talk like that in real life about their cars? Could have been easily written / scrippted by an ad agency / marketing guys. I don't see anything particularly negative about featuring older Nissan cars, I see it as a chance to remind the public of the company's heritage and the brand has grown along with them over the many decades. That sounds more real.
This is my favourite I am Nissan CRA2Y video of all. It sounds authentic and has a dose in humour in it. See what I mean that by any plain boring car can have an interesting story. It's all about the life that revolves around the vehicle. Many of the other videos make their owners sound more like Nissan salesman than a genuine owner.
Hyundai has been growing from strength to strength and it is one of the few car companies that actually registered positive growth last year. While its domestic market South Korean market has crashed, Hyundai sales performances were pretty encouraging in main export markets such as Australia, North America (up from 5.0 per cent light vehicle market share to 7.3 per cent), Europe (the only top-10 brand to lift sales this year) and China, where sales increased 69 per cent in what is now the world’s biggest market. The Avante / Elantra X20 is one of the best selling cars in China. Locally however, the Hyundai brand have suffered much neglect, with the brand seeing through 2 different distributors over the last 20 years (Berjaya Group, Kah Bintang) and at one time CKD and CBU Hyundai models were sold via different outlets and distributors. How the heck is average Joe Public going to know which dealer to go to? Some form of order was only brought back recently when Sime Darby assumed full control over the Hyundai franchise.
But the damage to the brand is too serious to be fixed over a short period. In its better days, the Sonata was seen as a decent cheap alternative to traditional Japanese mid-size sedans. But these group of early adopters to the Hyundai brand were not rewarded for their "faith" in a relatively new upstart in the market. There was little consistency and direction for the Hyundai brand locally when the brand kept changing hands and the negative effect of this can clearly be seen today. Sales of Hyundai vehicles is a far cry from its more successful early generation Sonata and Matrix days. Most of the early customers have since moved on to other family brands. Remember that it costs 3 times as much to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer. Hyundai is faring quite well in neighouring Singapore, so there is nothing wrong with the product (the new generation of Hyundai models). But are local consumers ready to warm up to the Hyundai brand again?
He can be contacted at autoindustrie[at]gmail[dot]com
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