Hyundai UK & Copa90 Link On CGC World Cup Campaign

Hyundai UK’s tactic of partnering with the leading YouTube football channel follows research from the Google-owned video platform showing that 10.4 million UK football fans are online, with 4.5% of them classified as heavy YouTube users with a monthly average of 100 YouTube page views and each visiting averaging eight minutes.

Thus the independent YouTube channel partnership seems a sensible way for the sponsor to enhance its official FIFA rights and engage committed football follows in a space the fans actual choose to go and to offer them a chance to enhance their World Cup experience.

‘Our long-term partnership with FIFA allows us to connect fundamentally with a passionate global audience,’ explains Hyundai marketing director Andrew Cullis.

‘For this year’s 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil, we wanted to further improve that connection by working with Copa90 to bring engaging content and an exclusive competition to enhance the fans’ experience of the tournament – bringing a bit more of Brazil to Britain.’

Tom Thirlwall, CEO of Bigballs Films (the digital media company behind Copa90) adds: ‘We are thrilled to be working with a brand of Hyundai UK’s calibre to deliver a set of experiences our audience could not have achieved without them. This is a great example of a brand looking at ways it can add value for the audience they want to engage.’

Hyundai (and sister company Kia Motors) places football sponsorships at the very core of its marketing strategy around the world and its FIFA partnership (as the Official Automotive partner of FIFA until 2022) is the spearhead platform.

Its umbrella approach to this is to use its football rights as an ‘efficient’ way of communicating with customers by sharing their passion for football and building an emotional connection.

Hyundai’s official alliance with FIFA dates back to 1999 when it signed as a sponsor of 13 FIFA competitions – led by the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea & Japan. In 2010 it extended the partnership until 2022.

As part of this deal Hyundai/Kia provide the World Cup ground transportation fleets and its rights package spans all FIFA competitions, including the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the FIFA U-20 and U-17 World Cups for both female and male players, the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, the FIFA Interactive World Cup, the FIFA Futsal World Cup, the FIFA Confederations Cup as well the FIFA World Cup itself.

In terms of the auto brand’s other global World Cup activation to date, March also saw Hyundai unveil Iker Casillas (Real Madrid & Spain) and Ricardo Kaká (AC Milan & Brazil) as its flagship worldwide player ambassadors for 2014 World Cup Brazil.

The players will have a central role across a broad range of the car company’s upcoming international creative campaigns spanning TV work, print ads, digital marketing and on-site events and experiences.

Additionally, Hyundai Brazil has also recently unveiled Chelsea and Brazil midfielder Oscar Emboaba as the brand’s World Cup campaign ambassador within the host nation itself.

Oscar will front a set of Hyundai Brazil marketing initiatives will follow on from the brand’s current World Cup focused campaign in Brazil – ‘Hexagarantia Hyundai’.

This initiative offers new car buyers in Brazil between 1 January and 12 July one extra year of warranty of the host nation’s team win the World Cup.

The campaign is built on a play on words around ‘hexa’ – which means ‘sixth’ and references the fact that Brazil has already won the World Cup five times.