In early 2009, Kia Motors and David&Goliath introduced the Kia Soul to the american market
in a television campaign that featured hamsters driving the car, listening to some funky music,
while the rest of their rodent world was stuck riding some lame hamster wheels.
They showed the world there was a different way to go from point A to point B, and because
they did so, they positioned the boxy vehicle as the fun alternative to the already established
"alternative" category.
The campaign won fans, accolades, and placed the Soul as the leader of the segment.
So when Colin came to Noah and I with the briefing for year two of the campaign, we knew
we had a pretty big responsability in our hands. The task Kia wanted us to take care of was to
continue to use the hamsters but have more of a competitive message, since the Scion XB
and the Nissan Cube were on the Soul's heels. All of it with the extra layer of "you need to
make it more popular and successful than last time". Great.
After a day or so panicking, we thought that using the hip-hop genre as a natural landscape
for a competitive message would be nice, specially when you added to it the nicknames people
used to call their boxy cars: in the streets, Scion's are known as "Toasters", while the Cube
is known as the "Washing Machine".
The
first idea was to set up a 8-Mile type of rapping battle
between a hamster and a toaster, but then we found
the classic early 90's Black Sheep track, "The Choice
Is Yours" and decided to make a music video following
the previous year structure - comparing the Soul with
other rides - only this time the hamsters would have way
more personality and, well, would be rapping to camera.
CW: Noah Phillips
ECD: Colin Jeffery
CCO: David Angelo
AGENCY: David&Goliath
Year: 2010
