If it worked for The Travelling Willburys, The Highwaymen and Cream, why not for Hyundai?
The auto brand activated its sponsorship of the MK Awards, South Africa’s major annual music ceremony, by giving fans the chance to put together the Hyundai Supergroup.
MK, a predominantly Afrikaans music channel, held its 7th MK Awards in Pretoria in 2013. It was attended by 750 African musical glitterati and to promote the event and its partnership, main sponsor Hyundai created an innovative campaign that involved music fans, the bands and the brand.
To leverage its rights to the event, which honours South African musicians making waves in their respective genres and features some of them country’s biggest acts live on stage, the car manufacturer put together a 5-piece Superband.
The idea behind the link between the car and the Supergoup was that Hyundai claim that its i20 Glide model offers’ the best of everything’.
The campaign, developed with The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape, gave fans themselves a chance to vote for which musicians should form the band.
15 of South Africa’s most popular musicians were selected as a short list and the fans could then vote for their favourite five. All of these participating musicians were actually drawn from the finalists in the ‘best band’ category of the MK Awards.
An individual animated ‘pick me’ video spot was created for each of the 15 musicians in order to showcase their individual talents and make their case for inclusion both on TV and online.
Driven by these spot appeals, fans could vote for their favourite choices on a campaign Facebook page.
In addition to the Facebook voting application, there were also Facebook updates and Twitter strands to the initiative from the band members, the MK Awards organisers and from Hyundai.
Voting was incentivised through a competition that offered a Hyundai i20 vehicle as a prize for one of those who voted in full for the eventual winning band line-up.
The musicians who received the most votes got together two weeks before the show and jointly wrote an original song for the show.
Then, of course, on the night of the awards itself, the Hyundai Superband (which included Van Coke Kartel and Alex from ISO) rocked the crowd.
Comment
It might seem something of a challenge to connect a mid-range hatchback with a love of South African music, but Hyundai’s campaign certainly generated music fan engagement and substantial earned media coverage too.
Furthermore, this initiative actually generated excitement, created a unique experience and an end-of-campaign piece of content that genuinely interested the target market and the event fans.
Thus the sponsor actually enhanced the value of the event, rather than just spent money supporting it.
Although having an actual vehicle on stage as part of the Supergroups’ set might have been a bit clichéd and rather forced.
The Facebook campaign racked up 2056 Likes, but more impressive were the initiative’s bottom line results. Hyundai sales increased 150% (a jump of more than 1500 cars) in the month of the sponsorship.
Links:
Campaign Overview Video YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWgR6EWoVEc
Hyundai Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/HyundaiSA
Links
