The Campaign

Hyundai believes future spaces for humans need to be more nature friendly, also to stimulate the senses, which we are born with. Bringing the night sky to ground is a way of speaking directly, connecting to deep parts of our minds. The darkest building on earth, the Hyundai Pavilion is to bring the brand vision of future mobility to a physical space-- through the Universe, Water, and Hydrogen--to convey the story of its technology. While the fuel cell technology is something extra scientific and technical, we believe there is power in the old, physical, and tactile experience, which helps people feel connected to the future mobility and the society it will take us.

Execution

Since Hyundai was a domestic Olympic sponsor, it was restricted to domestic PR. Therefore, the increase of the organic engagement by digital media was important. As digital becomes more common, ironically a digital paradox is created, and consumers have the opposite tendency to find analogue experience and word of mouth together. It means that the increase of the organic engagement is created when analogue contents combined with practical experience. Base on this idea, we provided the physical and tactile experience, which encouraged the spontaneous PR. Before the opening of the Olympic Games, the teaser film, which illustrated the universe, raised the curiosity of the public. During the game, the visitors posted the experienced contents in the Hyundai Pavilion by themselves and this initiative reaction was impact on the traditional global media such as BBC, NBC, CBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, The guardian, Reuter, and they reported in detail.

We welcomed 72,000 visitors over 30 days of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. However, the greatest impact was felt globally. Major broadcasters such as BBC, CNN and NBC dedicated features to the "making of" the project and the collaborators involved, and the story of "the blackest building on Earth" spread virally, across all forms of media. Since it simultaneously combined architecture, storytelling, marketing, innovation, new materials, technology, history, science, art, and was for a car company and during the largest sporting event on earth in 2018, it was picked up by specialist media dealing with each of these subjects, and by the individual correspondents dealing with these subjects within all the general news outlets who were covering the Winter Olympics. This gave the project a exponentially wider reach than would normally be achieved around a car launch. Market share of green cars has been increased 176% more than last year.

The Situation

Hyundai Motors determined to support both 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and Paralympics as a global auto brand. It was a great opportunity to communicate with global audiences, providing a brand pavilion at our own Winter Olympics. The brand vision of the future mobility, ‘equal for everyone’, was also truly corresponding to the Olympic spirit. Instead of focusing on display of products, Hyundai strongly emphasized the fundamental story of hydrogen as eco-friendly energy. Such distinguished place received attentions from international media and finesse its way onto a multitude of social media feeds. Significantly, the earned media was viewed 493,000,000+ times.

The Strategy

Indeed, promotion of the products is essential. However, it is important to note that Hyundai pioneered the mass production of hydrogen fuel cell cars. Even though no efforts have ever been made to consider hydrogen as a future source of energy, Hyundai confidently endeavored and successfully developed a new method of fuel cell technology. Therefore, we found this as an opportunity to show the world that Hyundai is life partner of those who seek to discover and promote new possibilities for the society. Hence, Hyundai established to set the strategic targets of this PR to individuals that both enjoy soft media and interested in the fields of Architecture, Culture, Design, Art, Fashion and Lifestyle. Appealing itself as an organic media, many organizations and influencers of different areas showed a great interest in this project.