Monitoring "Kia Soul: In My Mind" Conversations

I was a modern dancer for 12 years growing up and have always been intrigued by dance and how it manifests as an art form, therapy, and entertainment so when I saw Kia's "In My Mind" advertisement campaign for the Kia Soul, I was automatically interested in what they were doing. I'm sure a lot of people have seen the campaign as it features three life-sized hamsters in different outfits dancing to the song "In My Mind" and driving a car, the Kia Soul. The "In My Mind" campaign is basically a dance competition where participants, whom do not need to be trained dancers or even good dancers, produce a video that goes along with the featured song and have a chance to win a brand new Kia Soul.

The famous dance group, "Jabbawockeez", created a demo video to encourage people to participate in the competition:

I have been monitoring the social media activity of this ad campaign over the last few weeks and there was a surprising amount of enthusiasm! The time period up until this point in the study is October 6th to October 24th (although the contest started in September so some of the social media findings are from then).

Over this period of time I have been using Ice Rocket, Social Mention, Addictomatic, and Google trends to monitor the Groundswell reaction to the "In My Mind" contest. I have also been using the "Kia Soul" Youtube site and other Youtube videos from the contest.

• Visually aligned appearance over Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube

Each social media platform garners the same composer hamster and similar color scheme and font creating a synergy between the platforms so that the Groundswell can easily recognize the campaign and becomes part of the story.

• Twitter

October 6

October 10

(Bing News from Addictomatic)

October 16

October 24

Over the course of October, Twitter seemed to stay engaged with the competition. Kia's use of the hamsters was an idea and an image that a lot of people recognized and thought was unique about the ad campaign. In effect, the advertising was not really about the car but about what was going to get people's attention. It seems that the hamsters as a symbol of the advertisement campaign and the Kia Soul allowed for more recognition and excitement about the campaign. Also, the idea of movement and dance engaged people to comment about their own dancing and music in relation to the Kia Soul.

• Social Mention Results

The strength of the ad campaign stayed at a constant 5% which is not very strong. Sentiment rose from 27:1 to 83:1 and then plateaued at 13:1 with most feeling neutral. People felt more positive than negative though which is a good sign for the campaign. Passion ranged from 60 to 75% throughout the month while reach stayed in the 20% range. It seems that from these results the Kia Soul has created a community similar to that of Mini Cooper (example from Groundswell) whereby they have created a community and within that community, people are very passionate but the reach to people outside of their community may not be so strong. This community-centered way of selling a product can be successful if done in the right way.

• Trends Results (Google Trends and IceRocket)

According to IceRocket and Google Trends, postings about the Kia Soul peaked at the end of September into early October and have started to peak again. These results show that after the ad campaign was launched, it took a while for people to start participating but once the youtube videos went viral, participation peaked. Then, when the winner was announced, participation peaked again.

• Sales

"The latest sales figures released concerning the US car market clearly show that the Japanese auto industry is still on the receiving end of some very sluggish numbers. The same cannot be said for Korea’s Kia Motors Corp. who is riding a wave of great sales success, thanks in large part to the stylish Kia Soul.

The 2012 Kia Soul moved an impressive 63,635 units in the US during the first 6 months of the year. That gave Kia a staggering 82% percent market share in the segment, easily beating competitors such as the Nissan Cube and Toyota’s Scion xB."

Sales Figures

Month	Kia Soul U.S. Sales 2010	Kia Soul U.S. Sales 2011	Kia Soul U.S. Sales 2012	Kia Soul U.S. Sales 2013	Kia Soul U.S. Sales 2014
January	2145	5345	8091
February	3600	6684	10,876
March	5106	10,028	13,607
April	5223	10,459	10,716
May	6134	11,157	10,146
June	6429	11,314	10,199
July	8020	10,131	10,063
August	7021	6885	10,191
September	5346	6666	9467
October	6137	7109
November	5582	6865
December	6367	9624

These number show that that Kia experienced the most sales at the beginning of 2012. In September, compared to other years during that month, there were more sales but not compared to the rest of 2012. These results are quite surprising because they show a decrease in sales after the advertisement campaign was launched.

And finally....CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE WINNING VIDEO!

While there exists some active engagement of the Groundswell concerning the "In My Mind" ad campaign, it seems restricted to a certain community. I am surprised that sales have decreased since the big launch of the campaign.

For the future, I expect that the campaign will continue the way it has been going and probably not reach out to many more people. There was a great response on Youtube with people posting videos but it does not seem to affect sales or reach very much. I will continue to follow the campaign to see if there are any large changes. It seems that people are now more focused on the newer cars that are coming out but these responses are still only within the Kia Soul community. We will have to see!