Hyundai Turns Heads and Hearts

When bloggers are talking about you in a positive way you know you’ve done something right. Hyundai recently announced a new program called Assurance - they’re allowing people to return their cars if they have lost their jobs. While the world economy plummets further south and the recession hits the wallets of even the most penny pinching stooges, this is positively wonderful news.

Hyundai’s official statement about Assurance is “Starting today you can feel good about buying a car, despite these current times. If you find that you cannot make your payment because of a covered life changing event, we'll allow you to return your vehicle and walk away from your loan obligation”

Image from: autobragblog.com

According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics in the US, the employment situation has fallen dramatically with over 1.9 million losing their jobs in the last four months. It’s further estimated that approximately 2.1 million will lose their jobs in 2009. It’s less likely that people will continue to invest in costly consumer goods such as cars when there is such a huge risk of bad credit involved if they can’t meet the required payments. In response, Hyundai have managed to develop a marketing offering that people really need and want. Hyundai repeated their message during the Superbowl game last Sunday to reach the greatest number of people with their heartfelt message. An article written by Jonah Bloom in Advertising Age explains how this is the biggest marketing idea to come out of the recession. There is some massive consumer insight involved there.

"This is a recession of fear," said Joel Ewanick, VP-marketing at Hyundai. "We realised that the elephant in the room was the fear of losing your job. I feel the same way. We all do. The idea of giving people the option to give the car back if they were struggling . . . seemed a great way to make customers comfortable and increase our market share in an economy like this."

Hyundai had previously experienced a declining reputation in the US because of a history of bad parts due to cost cutting measures. In fact Hyundai used to stand for "Hope you understand nothing's driveable and inexpensive". However since 2004 they have won several awards and sales started to increase and this new campaign certainly helps put them on surer footing  in terms of their US reputation.

The online community has reacted positively with blogs such as the Motor Trend Blog, the Wordpress blog, blogged.com and Jaffe Juice all singing Hyundai’s praises.Hyundai has over time turned the tide of negativity against them in the US and increased their online reputation. In order to further increase their growth they could track the positive sentiment towards them over the next year of the campaign in order to assess whether they maintain the trust of the online community. Listening, analysing and responding to  the positive reactions in the blogosphere can lead to valuable growth.