I decided to take a peek at Kia’s website and see if the Stinger configurator is up yet. It’s not! But Kia does have a ridiculous brand synergy marketing tie-in with an unnamed “recent big fashion event in New York City” and the hashtag #StingerRunway. Uhhh...what’s going on here?
Once I clicked on the link to the Youtube page for the embedded video, I learned that the gentleman third from the right is Alex Rodriguez. So there’s at least someone recognizable, who I didn’t recognize because I haven’t paid attention to baseball since approximately 1997. He’s also the only male in the picture who made it into the video, so I still have no idea who those three other dudes are.
Why did they make Joan Smalls, a person who is apparently a supermodel, but I have never heard of because I’m a 35 year old car nerd who wastes time at his corporate job looking at cars online, mix a racing suit with a shirt with a cutout for her abs?
Is there any music they could have chosen that would be even more annoying than the repetitive electronic WAAAOOOOWAAAOOOWA sound throughout this video?
The celebrities mention beating each other’s times, but this race track appears to be a straight line along one edge of a Manhattan parking lot. There’s no visible timing device, not even some guy with a clipboard and a stopwatch.
When asked to comment on her experience “racing” the Kia Stinger, Candice Swanepoel, another person who is apparently a supermodel, had this to say:
“The car felt sooo good, I hit the gas and it went really fast immediately.”
BAH GAWD, never has there been more detailed, insightful commentary on the intricacies of a vehicle’s performance.
For those of us who were wondering how Kia was going to try to sell a premium sorta-luxury performance 5-door fastback, now we know. Instead of trying to appeal to Car People™ with some sort of really good, better-than-the-actual-luxury-brands aspect of the Stinger, Kia’s ad agency decided to clumsily appeal to brand whore entry-luxury car customers by stroking their brandwhoreism.
Because surely, people clutching a Coach purse while they sign a $299/month lease for CLA250 will be swayed by supermodels and A-Rod briskly accelerating Kia Stingers in a Manhattan parking lot, at a time when a fashion show may also be occurring, and having an E! host interview them about the experience. That will totally get them to think of an expensive Kia as equally impressive to their Instagram followers as an in-car selfie that manages to include at least one BMW logo.
Now that I think about it, maybe this marketing strategy does make sense. Somebody needs to lease all those brand new Kia Stingers so the enthusiasts will have a ready supply of heavily-depreciated CPO Stingers in about 18 months. Someone’s got to do it, right?