Hyundai and its first Black agency connect to customers with positivity

"We have your back."

That is the message from Hyundai Motor America and Culture Brands, the automaker's first Black marketing agency.

The automaker and agency began working together in 2021, producing ad campaigns with uplifting overtones that depict everyday Black people living their lives.

For example, "Dad's Precious Cargo" shows a father chauffeuring his daughter and her friends to a dance in a Palisade, highlighting the large crossover's spacious second and third rows and intercom. Another spot, "Leading by Example," shows a boy being picked up from school by his uncle in an Ioniq 5 for a "guys night." They stop for snacks while recharging the electric vehicle from 10 to 80 percent in 18 minutes, and when they get home they plug a video game console into the vehicle, demonstrating its reverse charging capability.

Culture Brands has also produced campaigns for the Santa Fe and Tucson crossovers.

Hyundai's search for an agency to help address racial inequality began in 2020, following civil unrest resulting from the death of George Floyd while in police custody.

The automaker's executives said, "Hey, we can do more," Erik Thomas, director of experiential marketing at Hyundai Motor America, told Automotive News. "We can do more to connect with these multicultural audiences that are maybe feeling disenfranchised." After a lengthy search, Hyundai selected Culture Brands. The agency was founded in 2017 by CEO Eunique Jones Gibson, who had marketing and advertising experience with Microsoft Corp. as well as other companies on the publishing side.

"We really started to work with brands and organizations on their culturally relevant tentpoles and campaigns," Gibson said.

The agency was formed to support the work it was already doing, but to also make sure brands and organizations "weren't just looking at us from an amplification or an influencer [standpoint], but really understanding the full service we offer to brands that we felt 'got it' and understood what we were trying to do in marketing to Black and brown audiences."

Among Culture Brands' clients are Warner Bros., Black Entertainment Television, Nickelodeon, Genworth Financial and the antisexism nonprofit UltraViolet. While Hyundai is its first automotive client, members of the agency's staff of roughly 20 have experience working with the industry.

"One of the things that was important to us in working with Hyundai was making sure we brought together very experienced individuals from various aspects, but within that automotive realm," Gibson said. "A lot of us brought agency experience working with some of the legacy Black agencies. Others came from the client side or branded content. But we've all had various touch points within the automotive realm."

The Culture Brands team is diverse in age, range and ethnicity, she said, but it also has members with decades of experience in automotive. "So that balance is very key to our success."

About 9 percent of Hyundai's new-vehicle buyers are Black. With about 13 percent of the U.S. market consisting of Black consumers, "we're definitely chasing that opportunity," Thomas said.

"The African-American public doesn't really know us — they don't really have an opinion of us one way or the other, which is actually a little bit of a benefit," he added. "We think about where Hyundai started. We've made such inroads for maybe my parents' generation, but the problem is they don't know us, right?

"So when you can tell the enriched stories about what we have to offer in an authentic way, in connecting, as this current generation does, through resources that they trust — which isn't always just a commercial. It isn't always just the news," he said. Connection happens "through voices and parties that they recognize and trust that are authentic, and that's really making an impact.

"In just this limited time of doing so, we're seeing returns."

A study by McKinsey reported that 35 percent of Black consumers it surveyed are not loyal to a particular auto brand. The study estimated that up to $14 billion of Black consumer spending in the sector will be up for grabs. The number could grow to $25 billion in 2030, McKinsey said.

Culture Brands said it has generated more than 747 million impressions across measured media channels, with 25 media partners, 40 African-American influencer partnerships, nine branded content pieces and more.

Since it began working with Culture Brands, Hyundai said, the percentage of African-Americans who have an "excellent opinion" of the automaker has risen 5 points to 20 percent.

Gibson and Thomas are adamant that their companies are not letting the issues of equality raised in 2020 fade.

"That's not happening at Hyundai," Gibson said. "That sentiment that we can do better hasn't gone away. If anything, it's been strengthened over the last few months and years."

Thomas added that the appeal of working with Culture Brands is a "people-forward" focus.

"We're about celebrating our culture at its best — and the chatter that the zeitgeist around us isn't always positive," he said. "We're seeking to focus on the positive and uplift, and that's our purpose."