This weekend I was posed the question, from and advertising perspective, "What do you think of those rapping hamsters?" Well, it's not what I think of those rapping hamsters, it's what the Kia Soul's target market, Gen Y, thinks of them. Let's take a look.
Little do many people know, every advertisement stems from strategic research. Yes, even the ones with rapping hamsters. "A New Way to Roll" was the first Kia hamster commercial that aired in 2009. David & Goliath - Kia's advertising agency - chose a hamster as the spokesperson of choice for this campaign because hamsters are a "metaphor for sameness," the "sameness" of everyday life that Gen Y will do anything to avoid. The hamsters break the mold as they drive by other critters who are stuck in hamster wheels that can't actually roll down the street. The commercial also defied monotony by playing a different music track each night that the ad appeared.
The next hamster commercial "This or That" further broke the mold by turning the hamsters into hip hop artists, rapping in hooded sweatshirts about the Kia Soul. It aired during the NBA Finals and also went viral soon after it launched. How could it not? It's hard to forget those little critters when you see them not only driving a Kia Soul, but also blinged-out and rapping.
And so the strategy worked. In June, Kia Motors America boosted their sales by 45% in comparison to the same period last year according to CNN. Kia's sales increased 1.5% monthly while sales continued to fall for their top competitors. 80% of dealers in the nation sold out of the Kia Soul
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