STRONGBRANDS    Professor Tim Calkins, Kellogg School of Management

Over the past two weeks I’ve been talking a lot about the Super Bowl ads. I hosted a webinar with my colleague Derek Rucker, did television interviews on NBC, ABC, and Fox, and talked with radio stations from San Diego to Memphis to Boston.

As I’ve considered the ads, I’ve become more and more interested in Kia’s most unusual spot for its new large SUV, the Telluride.

Kia’s Ad

The spot, as you might remember, focuses on a small, often over-looked Georgia town. It begins with a child’s voice explaining, “We are not famous. There are no stars in the sidewalk for us, no statues in our honor. We’re just a small Georgia town of complete unknowns…. Our movie stardom, our football careers, they never took off.”

You can watch it here.

The ad features scenes of a decaying rural mill town, then continues, “We are not known for who we are. We hope to be known for what we do. What we build. This thing we’ve assembled, it has chance to be remembered. No we are not famous, but we are incredible, and we make incredible things.” The visuals shift to Kia’s new Telluride SUV, then it closes with the line: “Give it everything.”

An Unusual Spot

On first glance, the ad seems unusual, dark, even somewhat condescending. The spot makes a big deal of the fact that the town is full of unknowns, people who haven’t achieved their dreams.

How is this going to sell cars?

The Insight

The more I consider the ad, however, the more I think Kia is tapping into an important insight, one that is at the core of our country’s challenges. There are two notable groups in the United States- the achievers and the mainstreamers. The achievers have good jobs and have done well. Over the past decade, their incomes have risen. They are, as Peggy Noonan observed in a Wall Street Journal editorial, the protected.

Most people aren’t in this group; they are mainstream individuals who haven’t seen this sort of progress. The economic boom has largely passed them by; incomes have stagnated even as inflation continues. They don’t win awards, go to benefit galas, or drive Teslas. They know this, and they also know that they are honest, hard-working people trying to raise a family in a tough time.

Sadly, the achievers tend to look down on the mainstream people, and the mainstream people can’t relate to the achievers. This disconnect partly explains why Donald Trump won and why the outcome surprised so many people.

Kia is tapping right into this insight with its Telluride spot. The ad speaks to the mainstream, in a tone that is empathetic and true. The core message: working people, the people who build the Telluride down in Georgia, are incredible. And they build an amazing car.

Kia knows the achievers aren’t likely to buy a Kia. So they don’t talk to them. Instead, Kia reaches mainstream people with a message that resonates.

Achievers likely don’t understand the message, but many mainstream people do. I was in Nashville last week doing a program for a group of roofing contractors, and showed them the spot. They completely understood the message. In the USA Today Ad Bowl, a bit of a popularity contest, people with lower incomes liked the ad more than people with higher incomes.

Great marketing comes from targeting and finding customer insights, and Kia’s Super Bowl ad does both.

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