If you ask me, some of the best advertising campaigns over the years have come from car manufacturers. As a B2B PR agency, we can certainly appreciate the original approaches they take. Who could forget Skoda’s car-cake commercial? And what about Honda’s advert showing a domino-effect of car parts? Most recently, Hyundai carried out a ‘Message to Space’ campaign: a PR stunt that quickly became a YouTube hit.
The video made by Hyundai showed 11 of its cars write ‘Steph [Hearts] You!’ across a 59 million square foot patch of land in the desert. This was in aid of a girl who wanted to send a message to her dad, an astronaut who was in outer space and on the International Space Station. The girl’s dad shows his appreciation of the message by taking a picture and sending his own message back- a stunt to tug on your heart-strings. Since being aired earlier in the month, the video has received countless hits on YouTube and I’ve seen it many times over social media.
If you think about it, this is a pretty clever way to get exposure of Hyundai’s latest models. Even people with no interest in cars can be drawn to the video, as anyone can appreciate tyre tracks being used to communicate to outer space. In viewing the video, thousands of people have seen the Hyundai Genesis, watched it in action, and seen it show off all of its trendy features.
The stunt hit the Guinness World Records as ‘The largest track tyre image.’ So unless somebody else pulls off a similar thing, Hyundai’s stunt will stay memorable. Well done to Hyundai for pulling off an effective space-related stunt without going to space!
Alex Brown has just started his career at Skout PR and will be a regular contributor to the Skout blog.
