2020.07.31 Hyundai Motor Company
Hyundai Shaping the Future Together With BTS
How did Hyundai Motor Company and BTS - an automaker and a boy group - met together in the first place?
The power of love is quite immense. You want to be like that someone from top to bottom, Even that person's lifestyle. and if there are more than one, or even two, the power grows even further.
Sometimes the power would change into good deeds and propels the world to change into a better place. Hyundai Motor Company and BTS, which seem to have nothing in common, we wonder why how they met and cooperated with each other. What will their visions and goals be? We heard details from a staff from the Creative Works Department.
Q. Tell us about the global campaigning that you are working on with BTS.
On Earth Day, back on April 22, Hyundai unveiled a video clip called 'Presents for the Earth' on their global official YouTube channel. This was part of their global hydrogen campaign, collaborating with BTS, who star in the clip, and narrating about each beautiful place around the earth, showing the mother nature. The clip ends with the slogan ‘Because of You’. In order to look through the whole campaign message, first, you need to understand Hyundai’s brand vision.
Q. What are, then, Hyundai's brand vision and its goals?
The auto industry is going through a lot of changes that might even look like turmoil. The concept of autonomous driving, electrification, and sharing are the things that we have never heard of before. To respond to such a quick change, Hyundai, one of the traditional automakers, needed to transform itself to be a ‘smart mobility solution provider.’
All the changes that Hyundai makes go through under the company slogan ‘Progress for Humanity’; of which the goal is to spur real-life connections between people and offering them qualitative experiences through its advanced mobility solutions.
Q. So, why with BTS?
The progress for humanity is based on three major pillars - Clean Mobility, Freedom in Mobility, and Connected Mobility. All of these concepts, which are coalesced into the company's campaign, titled, 'Because of You', exemplify the various ways people, using Hyundai mobility solutions, can overcome the boundaries of time and space to enhance the quality of their experiences.
This collaboration with BTS is also part of this major campaign. Currently, BTS have tremendous influence all over the world and is well known for their good deeds. I thought BTS were the most suitable artist to deliver our vision.
Q. Do you have a value or vision that you share with BTS?
Collaboration with artists should be taken carefully. This is because belief is more important than an artist's popularity or influence, with all due respect. The company's vision and the artist's values should be the same to ensure they do everything together sincerely. Only when there is a common denominator, the collaboration gets to be truly meaningful and can inspire people, even beyond their fans.
Luckily, Hyundai and BTS are on the same page. Hyundai is leading the way in building a society that focuses on hydrogen, which is clean energy, for all mankind. It is a part of an activity related to eco-friendly mobility, one of the three directions for realizing the vision. Hydrogen is an eco-friendly energy source that does not emit any substances other than water after combustion and is without risk of depletion. Hyundai expects hydrogen would make our life much more prosperous.
BTS joined UNICEF's 'LOVE MYSELF' campaign for young people around the world aged 10 to 24, and also spoke at the UN General Assembly about the same topic. BTS indeed are artists with kindness ideas. Their fans, too, are taking the lead in making changes by sharing their beloved artists' beliefs and visions. As such, the direction of the vision pursued by Hyundai and BTS is a match, so we thought our collaboration couldn't be more meaningful.
Q. You are working on various hydrogen campaigns with BTS this year. Would you elaborate further?
The main consumers of future hydrogen energy are expected to be Millennials and the 'generation Zs'. They are pretty much close to IT devices, such as computers, smartphones, tablet PCs, and they are always willing to take action in cyberspace; they never hesitate to make their voices heard in every corner of our society. These people value being environmentally friendly, even when they are considering what to buy. I thought doing our global hydrogen campaign with BTS would be a clever way to reach out to them.
There is one thing BTS and hydrogen energy have in common; they both have ‘positive energy’ we all need to protect nature, and our future as well. The first campaign is about that the elements that each BTS member wants to preserve - dazzling sunshine, twinkling stars, crystal clear rain, and so on. For each postcard representing each element, the members wrote down a message they want to share.
Through the Hyundai official channel on Youtube, they released a campaign video 'Positive Energy' showing Mother Nature on World Environment Day back in June. And within less than a month, the video has gained more than transcendent 100 million views.
For their second campaign, they created ‘#PositiveEnergyChallenge’ campaign on TikTok, where users recorded themselves using the sound of water droplets. BTS posted theirs, singing and dancing to the song that contains the phrase 'Positive Energy' and 'Because of You'. The challenge was to call for especially the millennials and the generation 'Z' born between the 1980s and the early 2000s, who are pretty much familiar with using IT gadgets.
The second campaign was another hit. Over 910,000 self-recorded videos were posted, gaining over one billion views in total, within only six days, with 300 million counts of likes and shares. It implies that the collaboration between Hyundai and BTS has approached the millennials who have a large appetite for tastes, and generation Z who recognize sustainability as a matter of survival.
Q. How would this collaboration with BTS help building the hydrogen society?
Hyundai is doing their best to create eco-friendly mobilities and energy sources. And of course hydrogen is the essence of it. Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is never going to get depleted since it is continuously created from multiple production plants of various industries. Nor does it require a certain environmental condition, unlike other renewable energy sources. Anyone can use this clean hydrogen energy, wherever they want. Its potential is endless.
Rather than directly advertising the Hyundai FCEV Nexo and their related technologies, online campaigns that share beautiful nature images and short clips on Tiktok are helping gain public attention naturally. I hope that Hyundai and BTS, who have tremendous social influence, will deliver the message about our planet together so that many people will be interested in the environment again and initiate other sincere social movements.
Q. You have also conducted a COVID-19 campaign with BTS. What was the plan behind this?
BTS expressed their willingness to deliver their positive message, to cheer us all up. And Hyundai has been also trying to find a way to do the same. Hence our campaign to overcome COVID-19.
As we were not free to go out due to social distancing worldwide, we planned to recommend people activities to participate in their home. This is how we created the #DarkSelfieChallenge on Earth Day back in April, which makes people turn off the lights and take selfies. Also, in the video titled "Staying home is an act of love," the BTS members showed us what to play, listen to, and do while staying at home.
Q. Are you planning for any other activities with BTS?
Through the best thing BTS can do, music, we are creating something to promote Hyundai's eco-friendly mobility vision. Stay focused! And Hyundai will continue to host various activities with BTS to promote their core values, eco-friendliness and sustainability.
Q. Any plans to work with other artists or celebrities?
Just like we did with BTS, we hope to find artists who can share our visions and values. This is because it would be the only way to stay true to our activities and campaigns. We need someone to share a common denominator and build a long-term relationship, and it does not always have to be artists. We are currently planning to work with opinion leaders with various kinds of expertise to create campaigns that would last.
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