Much of Kia’s growth over the past 10 years had come from conservative middle Australia who chose Kia and their top selling Cerato model almost exclusively because it represented ‘value for money’. It’s a sensible choice. For many, Kia is the cheap alternative to the car they really want.

The brief was to shift the perspective, to inject more personality and attitude into the Kia brand, making it more desirable on an emotional rather than financial level.

We needed to lift the brand association. And sell more Ceratos.

You can't make the mean sounds of the Kia Cerato GT without looking mean too.

We used this to put the Kia Cerato GT's attitude on full display.

We developed a mobile game where players could race the Cerato GT around a virtual track, controlling the GT by replicating its mean sounds. The meaner you sounded, the faster you went.

Player’s phone cameras captured the mean faces they pulled along the way. They could then share these mean faces together with their scores online for a chance to win prizes. Making them the faces of Kia's Get Mean campaign.

Changing perceptions of Kia required us to do more than a conventional automotive launch campaign. We needed to do something that would force reappraisal of the brand.

Whilst the typical Cerato buyer profile was older and more conservative, Cerato GT represented an opportunity to open a conversation with a younger, more progressive and performance driven audience who had fewer pre-conceived negative perceptions of Kia. In order for them to engage with our brand, we wanted them to participate in our campaign, not simply view it.

Our aim was to use the performance of the GT to create a halo over both the Cerato range and the Kia masterbrand. Our strategy was to invite participation and our proposition was ‘It’s the Cerato, only meaner’.

We wanted to be bold, impactful and surprise the market with an idea that was unexpected for Kia and the broader automotive category.

Implementation

With above the line creative that was all about car sounds, we designed a game that challenged people to make car sounds to drive the Cerato GT. With audio and video capture enabled, the game had people making their best car sounds into their smart phones, whilst capturing their mean faces as selfies that they could share to social media

Timeline

2 weeks of R&D to identify and test the required web technology. 3 weeks of game play and interface build. 2 weeks of user testing and optimisation before going live on 14th Jan 2019

Placement

190 display media placements driving traffic to a single web based mobile game

Scale

15,657 players initiated game play across Australia, US, Germany, India and Turkey

28,517 Online Visits to Get Mean Game Site. 15,657 Game initiations. 3,196 Entries into competition.

January 2019 became Kia Australia’s most successful month ever.

Dealers had to put the GT on backorder, and asked head office to up the price!

But most importantly, the brand transformation had begun.

We were seen as being more sporty (+%60), with greater performance (+%50), technologically advanced (+%37%). And most importantly, we were seen as being cooler (+50%).