How Kia Was A part of the Recreation With out Being within the Recreation
Kia had an epiphany. Why spend $7 million, plus manufacturing prices, for a 30-second Tremendous Bowl business the place an unknown variety of shoppers would see the spot and there could be restricted interplay with the model. Why not spend a fraction of that and have 540,000+ spend high quality time with the model by way of social media?
The 2025 Kia Squares sweepstakes, developed for Kia by their artistic company David & Goliath, was a free-to-play contest timed for the 5 days earlier than Tremendous Bowl LIX (performed on February 9, 2025). Based mostly on the basic squares sport that’s usually performed at Tremendous Bowl events, the guidelines had been simple to grasp. Gamers would choose squares on a ten x 10 grid discovered on Kia’s cellular pleasant web site. Every grid had a quantity that corresponded to the final digit of every crew’s rating on the finish of every of the 4 quarters. The deadline to play was 45 minutes earlier than the kickoff.
All 4 winners had entered right into a drawing to win one in all 4 Kia automobiles. The sport was promoted on Instagram and TikTok, with Kia sellers blasting it to their particular person databases.
To get the small print on this promotion Clear Fleet Report spoke with Megan Gillam, Kia’s director advertising operations & model technique, and Brad Mays, director model expertise, who make clear why this promotion was so profitable.
Clear Fleet Report: How does Kia measure return on funding (ROI) on a social media promotion like Kia Squares?
Kia: There are three alternative ways we’re taking a look at measurement. From a base perspective, we’re taking a look at impressions. By way of each paid and natural media we tracked impressions so throughout all of the totally different channels we had over 100 million impressions. The second is clicks that got here by way of the distinctive URL of KiaSquares.com. We had been capable of monitor how many individuals clicked by way of, from all of the media sources, which totaled 565,556 guests and resulted in 241,838 individuals registering for the sweepstakes.
CFR: Now they’ve visited the web site, what was the subsequent step?
Kia: People who opted-in might be taught extra about Kia. We added them to our database they usually went right into a CRM (Buyer Relationship Administration) curriculum. We didn’t, at this level, go too deep into demographics solely asking their title, e-mail tackle and cellphone quantity.
CFR: Because you initially didn’t ask the place they dwell means this database couldn’t be distributed to sellers in a selected metropolis. What did Kia do subsequent?
Kia: The names went into our hand-raiser curriculum the place that they had the chance to obtain extra info by agreeing to have a vendor reach-out to them.
CFR: Had been there incentives to drive them to the vendor and buy a automobile?
Kia: Kia doesn’t do quite a lot of non-public gives or buy incentives. The preliminary info they obtain is product info. They are going to be among the many first to find out about new product launches and gross sales occasions.
CFR: Kia is massive in sports activities and leisure sponsorships with the NBA, Kia Discussion board in California and the Kia Heart in Florida. Would possibly these hand-raisers be invited to a Kia occasion at one in all these venues?
Kia: The Kia Squares promotion was fairly straight-forward, the place somebody was opting-in to be a part of the competition to probably win one in all 4 automobiles. Kia doesn’t do prize achievement on the producer degree, so it will be as much as a vendor.
CFR: What are some takeaways and classes realized from the Kia Squares promotion?
Kia: This marketing campaign over-achieved our intentions. Greater than half of the impressions, 74 million, got here from TiKTok, which isn’t all super-young individuals. It does recommend they had been youthful, however Kia has a really younger purchaser base.
We additionally sponsored the USA At present Advert Meter, which is an commercial rating for the Tremendous Bowl the place individuals can view Tremendous Bowl advertisements within the week earlier than the sport. Although we didn’t have an commercial that ran on the Tremendous Bowl, we had been capable of get our Kia Squares promotion included in what commercials might be seen earlier than the sport. We additionally had an 88% optimistic sentiment score amongst people who previewed the promotion.
CFR: Are you able to focus on the price for Kia Squares?
Kia: The entire price of the prize automobiles and the promotion was a small fraction of what it will have been to take part within the Tremendous Bowl from an promoting perspective. I can’t share our actual prices and ROI numbers. I can say it was a really small fraction of what we’d have spent on an advert and in return we obtained over 100 million impressions, 241,838 entrants and virtually 250,000 individuals sign-up as hand-raisers. This was a solution to be a part of the sport with out being within the sport.
CFR: Will there be extra of some of these promotions?
Kia: This was a novel alternative that gave us a seat on the (Tremendous Bowl) desk, so to talk. We don’t foresee it being one thing we shall be doing regularly, however to return in for 5 days (the February 4-9 contest entry window) and generate this a lot buzz and pleasure for the price, it was nice. We had been doing Tremendous Bowl advertisements for fairly a while, and Kia Squares seemed like a terrific concept to remain current and keep seen in a cultural occasion that we had been part of.
CFR: One other main promotion Kia does annually is to sponsor the New 12 months’s Eve ball drop in Instances Sq.. Having completed it for just a few years, it have to be profitable. How do you measure it?
Kia: That is one other one the place we’re ready to have a look at impressions. We measure when individuals are watching the ball drop, round midnight, to see what number of are going to our web site and our socials, which provides us fairly tangible illustration of how engaged individuals are. Inside the first 24 hours of the ball drop we have now seen a noticeable spike in Kia.com site visitors that we will attribute to all of the eyeballs that had been on Instances Sq. and the published.
Notice: The Kia prize automobiles had been the 2025 EV9, Sportage, Carnival and K5. The winners resided in these cities with their Kia prize famous. EV9 GT-Line – Candler, N.C.; Sportage X-Professional SX Status AWD – Clarksville, Tenn.; Carnival HEV SX Status – St. Louis, Mo. ; and a K5 GT in El Monte, Calif.
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Story by John Faulkner. Photographs and graphics by Kia.
