Hyundai's Kona Probes the Realm of Imagination

Dragons, knights, monster trucks, soap bubbles! No, this isn’t an A.I.-directed Game of Thrones mashup. It’s “Noah,” Innocean Berlin’s latest work for Hyundai. The new Kona Electric zips around, through and amidst various dreamy details, before doing a 360° rotation around a tunnel’s edge and arriving in the hands of a child.

“When did you stop believing anything is possible?” the ad asks.

At the end, a mother summons her son, Noah, to the car. But this doesn’t end his reveries: Once mom lets him unlock the door with a mobile phone as if by magic, he continues playing in the backseat.

“The all-new KONA comes packed with a range of innovative features that give you almost endless possibilities, a fact that we wanted to communicate with this campaign in an exciting way,” explains Laura Rathai, Hyundai Motor Europe’s marketing director. “What is more exciting than diving into the imagination of a child?”

The ad is intended to promote the entire Kona lineup, and builds on Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung’s belief that human potential is limitless.

It goes without saying that new electric vehicles generally pack lots of compelling features, and this is doubtless true for the Kona. Perhaps it’s not worth wondering why the one feature chosen to represent such innovation was mobile unlocking. It was probably just the easiest element to film.

We’d struggle to call it imaginative, but neither is the idea that little boys like dreaming about knights and monster trucks, so it fits. This is mid-market work for a rather good mid-market electric vehicle, and it gets the job done just fine.

“Noah” was directed by Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig, alongside Sterntag and MJZ. Its standout visual element is the Kona’s nifty spin at the ad’s heart, an effect achieved by putting the car on a rotating platform built for the shot.

“Imagination is magical. We wanted to give the feeling of a kid playing with a toy car, and we had to find a way to make the car move like it does in the hands of a child,” Fuglsig says.

CREDITS

Client: Hyundai Motor Europe
CMO: Andreas-Christoph Hofmann
Director Marketing: Laura Rathai
Head of Brand Strategy & Campaign: Andrea Razeto
Brand and Product Campaign Manager: Max Leuthold
 
Agency: Innocean Berlin
European Chief Creative Officer: Gabriel Mattar
Executive Creative Director: Ricardo Wolff
Creative Director: Sebastian Pattis
Creative Director: Jose Suaid
Senior Art Directors: Ana De Alencar Conrado, Ahmet Kilic
Copywriter: Nicolas Holz, João Pedro Pinto Vaz
Chief Operating Officer: Jonathan Hill
Business Director: Björn Wilke
Sr. Account Manager: Ixchel Ochoa
Digital Director: Michael Dunker
Junior Digital Account Manager: Ismail Cobanoglu
Head of Production: Fabian Barz
Senior Producer: Allison Markert
Creative Producer: Valeria Preisler-Vogel
Strategy Director: Anna Nowak-Otto
Strategist: Ilaria Traverso
Senior Media Manager: Tripti Pandey
Media Manager: Maja Lah
Havas, European Business Lead: Wolfgang Ruch
Film Production Company: Sterntag Films GmbH, MJZ
Managing Director, Executive Producer: Maik Sierig-Lewin
Managing Director MJZ: Lindsay Turnham
Director: Nicolai Fuglsig
Cinematographer: Mátyás Erdély
DoP RF: Bernd Wondolek
Producer: Tim Wild
Production Manager: Andrea Harvey
1 st AD: Bettina Godi
Production Assistant: Lina Bugeja
Drone: Tamás Hévízi
Production Designer: Magdi Varga
Prop-Master: Brigit Nagby
Styling/Wardrobe: Diana Marton, Ildikó Andó
Make Up: Zsonbor Ágoston
Casting: Julia Todorow, Bloom Casting
Editor: Fabrizio Rossetti
Post-Production: 1920
Creative Director: Bill McNamara
Colourist: Kai Van Beers
Head of 3D / 3D Supervisor: Chris King
3D Supervisor: Ben Revens

3D Lead & Modeller: David Rencsenyi
3D Artists: Lucy Wright, Elena Schurkus, Manuel Fuentes, Miles Tomalin
3D Artist / Head of Tracking: Ash Ellis
3D Artist & FX: Oscar Hill
FX Artists: Arda Sernaz, Joe Baker
Animator: Eva Bennet
Rigging: Greg Martin
CFX: Lorenzo Argentieri
Head of 2D / VFX Supervisor: Chrys Aldred
2D Artists: Adam McHale, Ryan Hadfield, James Russell, Tijan Holder, Alejandro Marzo, Kai Davies,
Taylor Webber, Weronika Holak, Rod Norman
Concept Artist & DMP: Jordan Haynes
Senior Producer: David Keegan
Production Coordinator: Ella Whiting
Post-Production RF: Slaughterhouse HH
Executive Producer: Henning Martens
Producer: Emilia Pflug
Music: ZWEI Music GmbH
Sound Studio: SCHWARM
Sound Design: Loius McGuire, Nils Voge
Photographer: Frederic Schlosser
Post-Production: Trey