At Hyundai, making things better is at the heart of everything they do. It's why they question the impossible. It's why they wake up every morning and ask themselves: How can we make things better?
Our objective with this video content was to reach new audiences and tell stories that would echo Hyundai's "Better Drives Us" mantra.
To help craft that story, Hyundai and Innocean partnered with BuzzFeed to develop impactful branded content for the launch of the all-new Ioniq Hybrid. BuzzFeed set out to bring Hyundai Ioniq's product positioning, "You can do better without having to compromise" to life through video content that:
● Passes the Hyundai Empathy Test: enriching viewers' experience with positive content and making their lives better.
● Inspires viewers to not only consider purchasing a Hyundai Ioniq, but engage viewers to view, share, and comment on the videos.
● Helps lead to the strategic idea that Hyundai Ioniq enables people to do the right thing and be better, without having to compromise on both style and performance.
Hyundai and Innocean tasked BuzzFeed with creating content that delivers on Hyundai's brand promise.
We found inspiring young entrepreneurs that share the same brand ethos of "Better Drives Us", strategically aligned with them and told their stories, and used it as a platform to introduce our new Ioniq, which was showcased organically within the content.
Hyundai and BuzzFeed created a docuseries highlighting individuals in the community who personified this idea of being driven by better and making the world better around them.
In "How Your Leftovers Could Feed the Homeless" LaRayia Gaston, founder of Lunch on Me, demonstrates how she is driven to be better by sharing her mission to inspire radical acts of kindness in the homeless community. The Lunch on Me organization repurposes leftovers to feed the homeless six days a week and throws block parties, complete with barbers, reiki healing and quality meals. All because LaRayia believes everyone should be loved unconditionally.
The video "How One Rooftop Farm Could Make Your City Better" features Kristof Grina, founder of Up Top Acres, and his obsession with how commercial scale agriculture can fit into the densely populated built environment, creating a food source in the most unlikely and underused spaces.
Both videos show real-life examples of how you can do better without compromising, even with limited space and resources.
Results from Hyundai's Young Entrepreneurs Series with BuzzFeed exceeded expectations and far exceeded benchmarks.
The video series struck a chord. Sharing is the clearest metric for showing that media is creating a social connection between people. Each video surpassed BuzzFeed's sharing and engagement benchmarks driving more than 28.4M views, 87.6M impressions and 146K shares. We far exceeded Buzzfeed's Automotive Branded Content reaction ratio benchmark of .57% with rates of 4% and share ratio benchmark of .07% with rates of 2%.
Both videos made BrandTale's Top Branded Ads for the month of June. And "How One Rooftop Farm Could Make Your City Better" made Pressboard's Top 10 Branded Content Partnerships.
We saw lifts across key KPIs:
● Ad Recall
● Awareness
● Attribute Rating
The video series also had real-world impact: Within a week of the launch, the Lunch on Me organization received over 700 emails from people wanting to help. Whole Foods reached out to donate their leftover food as well as other businesses, including Uber. The chef from SpaceX is now volunteering for the organization.
Up Top Acres saw a similar impact, receiving emails from people across the world wanting to know how they can bring the concept to their cities, as well as property owners asking how they can adapt rooftop gardens on their buildings.
