Hyundai wins Advertising Age Marketer of the Year award

[Sal Collaziano]

Filed under: Car Buying, Sedan, Marketing/Advertising, Hyundai, Luxury, South Korea

Hyundai Genesis Sedan - Click above for high-res image gallery​

Allow us to set the stage. The year was 2009, the month was February. The U.S. economy, which for months had been showing signs of springing a leak, was now fully flooding into five forward compartments. Banks were dead or dying, the housing industry had ground to a halt and without massive influxes of cold, hard government cash, two thirds of the Big Three would have gone belly up.

Enter Hyundai. Amidst all the chaos and turmoil, the Korean automaker airs (during the Superbowl, mind you) a very simple commercial stating the following: "Now finance or lease any new Hyundai, and if you lose your income in the next year, you can return it free with no impact on your credit." This program, what Hyundai calls its Assurance Program, was just one of the many factors that led the editors of Advertising Age to name the resurgent Korean automaker's ad men as their Marketer of the Year - an award that isn't just confined to the automotive sector.

Aside from just appealing to "broken dreams," (i.e. bad credit, job loss) Hyundai also pushed the then new luxury Genesis Sedan to people with "intact dreams." Moreover, while the Superbowl tends to skew male, Hyundai made sure to scoop up all of bankrupt General Motors' ad spots during the Oscars, an event that skews heavily female. Long story short, Hyundai's market share is up during the first ten months of 2009 from 3.1% to 4.3% and in September, when the rest of the industry experienced a 22% sales drop, Hyundai's sales went up 27%. Tip of the hat to Vumiko!


Gallery: 2010 Hyundai Genesis sedan



[Source: Advertising Age]Hyundai wins Advertising Age Marketer of the Year award originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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[sandy]

A well deserved award.

 

[scottdk]

I was going to start a new thread for the following information, but the message said I was not authorized. So any, here we go:

[COLOR="Blue"]As Detroit rivals flounder, Hyundai sets sales record (e)[/COLOR]

Hyundai Auto Canada will roar through the 100,000 level in annual
vehicle sales later this month and has set an even higher target for
next year, the strongest signal yet that the South Korean company is
gaining on the Detroit and Japan-based auto makers in the Canadian sales
race. "That's kind of a barrier for anybody to bust through," said
Hyundai Canada president Steve Kelleher. "People sit up and take notice,
everywhere from our head office in Seoul right through to the consumers.
It has a certain ring of success to it." The record year for Hyundai -
during which its sales have surged 26%, compared with an overall decline
of 13% for the Canadian market - is prompting Hyundai Canada to set what
Kelleher acknowledges is an aggressive target for 2010. He's calling for
sales of 115,000 vehicles next year. The auto maker's success this year
is the reverse of a "perfect storm," Kelleher said in an interview.
Everything - including the weak economy - worked in the company's
favour. Hyundai's renaissance has been driven by price, high rankings in
quality surveys, a recession that convinced Canadians to seek great
value for money and an aggressive parent company. Hyundai maintained
production levels so it had enough vehicles to meet demand in Canada.
Industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers said that the recession has helped.
But he also pointed to Hyundai's new presence in all segments of the
market - except pickup trucks - and the low value of the South Korean
currency, which helps in markets such as Canada. "It's really a case of
the stars lining up for them," said DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers
Automotive Consultants. The recession generated a much higher emphasis
on value, he noted - an advantage for Hyundai. The company also
positioned itself to take advantage of the problems at Chrysler and
General Motors that led those two auto makers into Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection, he said. The majority of customers who have helped push
Hyundai's market share to a record 7.3% are former Chrysler and GM
buyers, Kelleher said.

Meanwhile, the number of auto assembly jobs in Canada hit its lowest
level in more than four decades during the third quarter, according to
DesRosiers. He called the employment figures "scarily bad" in a note to
clients yesterday. According to statistics released on Friday, Canada's
auto-assembly sector employed about 35,549 workers at the end of the
third quarter, after shedding about 7,000 jobs this year. The sector now
employs fewer workers than it did on Jan. 15, 1965, when the Canada-US
Autopact was signed, a time when there were 36,026 assembly jobs in the
country, DesRosiers notes. At its peak, the auto-assembly sector
employed more than 57,000 workers in Canada. "We've wiped out all the
employment gains from the Autopact, the FTA, the NAFTA, the move in
Canada by Honda, Toyota and CAMI. BAM ... gone ... and it only took
about 18 months," DesRosiers said. The auto-parts sector also dipped
below 61,000 for the first time since 1983 when North America was in the
midst of the second oil embargo. DesRosiers noted that many of the jobs
lost this year were the result of a cyclical downturn in the sector and
that some will be restored when it rebounds. "But some are structural as
well, with the closing of plants by GM, Ford and Chrysler, and are gone
for good," he said.
(Calgary Herald 091207, National Post, Globe and Mail 091208)