2025.08.20 Hyundai Motor Group
Hyundai Motor Group Shines at Cannes Lions, Connecting with the World through Branded Content
Hyundai Motor Group continues to pursue a wide range of innovative initiatives to connect with audiences worldwide.
Hyundai Motor Company’s short film Night Fishing has won the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Established in 1954 and now in its 72nd edition, Cannes Lions is recognized as the world’s most prestigious stage for the advertising industry. Each year, more than 25,000 entries from over 90 countries vie for top honors, drawing the attention of both the global marketing community and consumers.
Hyundai has become the first Korean automotive brand to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Night Fishing, which claimed the Grand Prix in the Entertainment category, also won a Silver Lion in the Classic: Film category, earning a double crown. Furthermore, the company’s CSR campaign Tree Correspondents garnered two Gold Lions and one Silver Lion in the Digital Craft category, bringing Hyundai’s award tally to five.
Meanwhile, Kia won a Bronze Lion in the Digital Craft category with Kia Soundscapes, an imaginative experiment that uses AI technology to transform natural landscapes into sound. This recognition highlights how Hyundai Motor Group’s branded content has been celebrated on the global stage for both creativity and innovation.
Cannes reacts to Hyundai’s experiment
Awarded the Grand Prix in the Entertainment category by the Cannes Lions jury, Night Fishing is a suspenseful short film set at an EV charging station that culminates in an unexpected twist. The project was co-planned by Hyundai Motor Company and Innocean, directed by Moon Byoung-gon—the first Korean filmmaker to win the Palme d’Or for Short Film at Cannes in 2013—and features actor Son Suk-ku, who also took part as co-producer.
At once a short film and a bold experiment, Night Fishing breaks completely away from the conventions of traditional automobile advertising. It was acclaimed for its creativity, particularly for its unique filming technique of the car-mounted camera perspective. The narrative follows an agent dispatched to an EV charging station to investigate a creature that steals electricity, only to come face-to-face with the enigmatic being.
What makes the film distinctive is that the story unfolds entirely through the perspectives of the Hyundai IONIQ 5’s built-in cameras, including its digital side mirrors. Commenting on this approach, Hyundai’s Brand Communication Team stated:
“From the initial planning stage, we focused on the idea of adopting the car’s own camera perspective and developed a fresh creative concept in which the vehicle itself is never fully shown throughout the film.”
Filming a movie entirely from the vantage point of a vehicle’s cameras presents inevitable challenges, such as restricted angles of view. Rather than attempting to overcome these limitations, Night Fishing turned them into creative opportunities. Director Moon’s unique approach embraced these conditions and transformed them into a distinctive style. When the action slips beyond the reach of the vehicle’s cameras, audiences are compelled to reconstruct the scene from limited visual and auditory cues. In this way, the technical constraints of resolution and field of vision became a source of dramatic tension, ultimately resulting in a film of remarkable immersion.
Moreover, Night Fishing refused to remain a mere distributed advertisement, instead emerging as branded storytelling that broke completely away from the conventions of traditional advertising. Unlike ordinary commercials, which are freely circulated and quickly forgotten, Night Fishing was screened in theaters with paid admission.
In June 2024, Hyundai premiered Night Fishing in 15 CGV theaters, introducing it as a new genre called the “Snack Movie,” a film designed for light and easy viewing. It immediately drew an enthusiastic response. Unlike conventional movie outings that require two to three hours, Night Fishing ran just 13 minutes, with tickets priced at only 1,000 KRW—factors that made it especially popular as casual, accessible entertainment.
The strong reception of the Night Fishing project reflects growing awareness of shifting consumer perceptions and the evolving media landscape. Today, consumers not only find little appeal in traditional advertising formats but often experience fatigue, leaving brands with the challenge of conveying their values and products to these audiences. In this context, advertising is expected to move beyond its old grammar and transform into content that people actively choose to engage with. Hyundai, in turn, recognized the potential of branded content to be consumed as entertainment at new customer touchpoints such as cinemas, galleries, and concerts. Night Fishing represents both the outcome of this first attempt and a case study in experimenting with new formats.
Creativity that swept the world stage
Night Fishing has already been acclaimed at major international advertising festivals, including those ranked among the “world’s top three.” Notable honors include the Grand Award at the Clio Awards, a Silver at the New York Festivals, the Grand Prix at Spikes Asia, and a Gold at ADFEST. Each of these accolades recognized the creativity and experimental spirit Hyundai demonstrated through Night Fishing—a recognition echoed by the Cannes Lions.
The Cannes Lions jury also offered high praise for Night Fishing. Jury President David Rolfe commented:
“‘Night Fishing’ is a somehow deeply humanistic, riveting and even bizarre action sci-fi piece, in the form of the highest order of branded entertainment. We were genuinely as awestruck by the craft and narrative as we were in admiration of its rootedness in IONIQ’s unique product attributes and brand identity.”
Meanwhile, Oh Seok-hyun, Senior Manager of Hyundai’s Brand Communication Team who oversaw the Night Fishing project, stated: “The success of Night Fishing came from recognizing changing consumer patterns and offering one possible answer to them.”
He went on to explain:
“With digital platforms driving the trend toward short-form content and quick but immersive stories, we really felt the need for a new kind of format. Instead of making an ad that looked like a film, we decided to create a real movie and even designed the experience of paid screenings at just 1,000 KRW. Hyundai set the direction and handled coordination across different teams, while Innocean brought the idea to life. Working closely with actor Son Suk-ku, director Moon Byoung-gon, and CGV gave us real synergy. The spirit of challenge and the fresh attempts in content we gained through the Night Fishing project will be an important turning point in building our brand over the long term.”
Another creative initiative recognized by the Cannes Lions jury was Hyundai’s AI-driven CSR campaign, Tree Correspondents. By giving trees a first-person voice to highlight the importance of forest preservation, the campaign introduced a compelling and original form of storytelling that strongly resonated in the context of climate action.
This marked Hyundai’s first attempt to incorporate IONIQ Forest—a decade-long CSR initiative dedicated to preserving biodiversity and addressing the climate crisis—into a brand campaign. On July 23, to commemorate the milestone of planting one million trees across 13 countries, Hyundai unveiled the full story of IONIQ Forest.
Kia was also honored with a Bronze Lion in the Digital Craft category for Kia Soundscapes, a campaign designed to let the visually impaired hear and experience the beauty of road landscapes through AI. Using ADAS cameras to capture natural scenery and AI to transform it into sound, the project reimagines landscapes as symphonies. Cannes Lions recognized this artistic exploration for expanding the boundaries of experience and enabling people to embrace nature without relying on sight.
For example, towering mountains are translated into the sounds of synthesizers, while trees are expressed through flutes, oboes, and bassoons. As each element of nature is detected, it is paired with sound to compose a spontaneous symphony. The result is a journey reimagined as music—transforming road travel into an immersive experience that allows even the visually impaired to feel the full richness of the landscape.
In today’s world, where everything is consumed at double speed, delivering messages that truly resonate requires constant reflection. That is why Hyundai Motor Group continues to pursue a spectrum of creative projects, staying committed to engaging with people in ever more original and distinctive ways. What fresh stories will Hyundai tell next? Anticipation is already building.
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