Those hip-hop hamsters will make a return in a new ad campaign planned for Kia this spring.
Those hip-hop Kia hamsters are coming back, TheDetroitBureau.com has learned, and should be strutting their stuff, so to speak, in a new ad campaign for the Korean maker’s edgy Soul crossover sometime this spring.
The original ad campaign, which helped launch the 2010 Kia Soul, proved to be one of the most popular automotive commercials in recent years and, on Wednesday, was named the year’s best automotive ad by the marketing research firm, Nielsen Automotive.
In the first go-around, a quartet of music-loving rodents could only smile as they cruised through a sea of suburban sameness the rest of their breed running nowhere fast on treadmills. Subtle details helped improve the ad’s effectiveness – three otherwise identical versions not only used different music but even displayed the song titles on the car’s audio system.
Specific details are being closely held – and building up a buzz in the social media world where the original ads quickly went viral. Caught after the automaker’s news conference, at the 2010 New York International Auto Show, Tom Loveless, Kia’s sales chief, suggested the rodent road warriors will return “soon.” But a well-placed source told TheDetroitBureau.com they’ll be back in a matter of weeks.
As before the spokes, er, rodents will be used only for the Soul crossover, and won’t take on more general marketing duties for the rest of the brand – which is scoring another viral hit with its sock puppet campaign.he
The source wouldn’t provide much more about the new campaign, other than suggesting it will go in a “new direction,” but we can expect that the quartet will rise about the banalities of daily life by driving the Kia Soul.
Whether one credits the hip-hop hamsters, the styling of the Soul or just the general direction of the brand, Kia has been on a roll. It was one of only three brands to gain share in the U.S. market, last year, and is posting record volume for both March 2010 and the first quarter.