Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
Kia’s EV9 Super Bowl ad scores big in preference survey
A scene from Kia’s TV advertisement for its electric vehicle, the EV9 SUV, released during the U.S. National Football League’s Super Bowl championship game, Sunday / Courtesy of Innocean
By Baek Byung-yeul
Kia's commercial for electric vehicle the EV9 SUV, which it unveiled during the U.S. National Football League's Super Bowl, the league's annual championship game on Sunday, created a buzz, ranking third in an ad preference survey, Innocean, the advertising arm of Hyundai Motor Group, said Wednesday.
Innocean said that Kia's EV9 advertisement ranked first among car brands and third overall during the Super Bowl championship, known as the world's largest advertising stage, according to an online vote conducted by USA Today on a total of 58 advertisements by participating brands.
Kia's EV9 advertisement, titled "Perfect 10," was unveiled during the first spot of the Super Bowl's fourth quarter and featured a teenage girl dreaming of becoming a figure skater.
In the advertisement, the girl looks at the empty seat next to her father in the audience after finishing her skating competition. Seeing his daughter's sad expression, the father drives the EV9 with his daughter and arrives at a log house in front of a pond.
Using the vehicle's load function and a bidirectional power feature that powers external devices, they set up speakers and lights. After completing the setting, the girl performs a skating performance in front of her grandfather, who was not able to attend the competition due to physical discomfort. After watching his granddaughter's performance, the grandfather, sitting in a wheelchair, draws the number 10 on the window.
Innocean said that Kia's Super Bowl advertisement resonated greatly with viewers due to its touching storytelling under the slogan "Kia EV9 is here. Electric like you've never seen." It also highlighted that the EV9 is the first three-row electric SUV.
"We wanted to convey hope and inspiration that can be felt in the process of realizing the power within us all, while emphasizing the features of the EV9, to the Super Bowl audience," D&G, Innocean's U.S. subsidiary that produced Kia's Super Bowl advertisement, said.
"As the only domestic advertising company that has consistently participated in a large-scale sports event like the Super Bowl for many years, we have once again proven Innocean's creative capabilities by achieving excellent results in this year's Super Bowl ad preference survey," an Innocean spokesperson said. "We will continue to show our creative capabilities to consistently present campaigns that consumers in the world can empathize with and be excited about."