Male Opps: Kia taps new brand experience director (Score 60)

Sales Lead: Brad Mays became Kia's brand experience director in February 2023.

• Mays previously served as the global communications strategy and insights head at Nissan.
• Now, he leads all of Kia's external communications aspects, which include PR, events, experiential, auto shows, and strategic partnerships/sponsorships.
• Mays replaced Michael McHale, who left Kia in March 2022.
• The company will likely:
  • Ramp up experiential marketing and other event initiatives
  • Pursue new partnerships and sponsorships
  • Shift its strategy, which could lead to higher overall ad spend
  • Seek new agency partners
• Target demographic: 
  • Millennial and Gen-X men

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • 2021-2022 spend: Kia spent approximately $149.5m on national TV commercials last year, up 5% from the approximately $142.6m spent in 2021.
  • 2022 ad programming: Its 2022 commercials targeted male sports enthusiasts watching NBA Basketball, NFL Football, the 74th Emmy Awards, The Big Bang Theory, and MLB Baseball.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • 2021-2022 spend: In 2022, the automaker allocated roughly $29.8m toward digital ads, 5% less than the roughly $31.3m allocated in 2021.
  • 2022 data: Last year, Kia earned around 2.9b digital impressions via desktop video (32%), desktop display (26%), Facebook (25%), Instagram (9%), mobile display (6%), and Twitter (2%) ads.
    • Top site destinations for last year's desktop video ads included YouTube.com (91%), yahoo.com, Twitch, caranddriver.com, and bleacherreport.com.
    • Kia placed most of last year's desktop display ads site direct onto destinations such as cars.com (41%), caranddriver.com, kbb.com, nadaguides.com, and yahoo.com.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The company utilizes print, OOH, local broadcast, and Google Ads.
  • Kia sponsors podcasts such as CBC News: The World This Hour, The Economist Podcasts, The John Batchelor Show, The Documentary Podcast, and The Kyle & Jackie O Show.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: Hires like this one sometimes lead to agency reviews, so get in touch soon to remain top-of-mind.
• Current agency roster:
  • David&Goliath: Creative AOR
  • Canvas Worldwide: Digital and media planning AOR
  • Innocean USA: Media (planning and buying) and experiential AOR
  • Zeno Group: PR agency partner

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser.