How Hyundai’s CMO is navigating upfront marketplace uncertainty and rapid-response tariff ads

The ad itself is a 30-second spot highlighting a pledge to hold its recommended retail price steady until the beginning of June, and features workers at assembly plants located in Georgia and Alabama — a wink to being American-made, and a nod intended to reassure consumers over tariff fears.

“When affordability is a peak concern for customers, we want to reassure them,” said CMO Sean Gilpin. Hyundai is not the first carmaker to highlight the provenance of its vehicles, though. Ford recently released a campaign dubbed “Committed to America” while Stellantis also put out ads borrowing patriotic language for its Dodge, Ram and Jeep brands (before pulling them, in the face of scrutiny over where its cars are actually made). Digiday spoke with Gilpin about how the brand is navigating those tensions and how it’s managing its media investments in the eye of a political and economic storm.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

How did you put together the campaign so quickly? 

We used footage that we had readily available. We had just opened up one of the plants that was featured in that spot — our Savannah, Georgia “metaplant” — about two weeks ago. So we had quite a bit of B-roll footage from that event, and it seemed like a good way to emotionally connect.

Wrapping oneself up in the flag can sometimes trip brands up. How did Hyundai decide on the campaign’s messaging and tone?

I don’t think we wrapped ourselves up in the flag. Our tone is a little bit easier to find; this isn’t our first time reassuring customers. It was just the tone we’ve always had in the market.

What media budget is Hyundai putting aside for the campaign?

We tend not to publish that kind of information. We are definitely using essentially all of our media investment for this month to communicate that message.

Which media channels does that include?

With messages like this, not to undersell it, [but] it’s not complex. This is a mass bulletin that we’re using all channels to make customers aware. From an awareness standpoint streaming and [national] broadcast are being used to get this message out there. 

Right now, the biggest sports we have going on here in the U.S. are probably the NBA playoffs and championships. We’re the official halftime partner with ESPN and ABC; Disney’s partnership helps us get that message out to NBA fans.

[The brand is also using sports integrations across MLB, PGA and English Premier League coverage, as well as digital, social and audio inventory].

Both [the ABC and ESPN partnerships] were purchased in advance as part of [last year’s] upfronts. Zero media was bought a week ago as a result of this campaign; all of our media investments are done in advance. There might be some shifts in regards to channel or how much investment is going to social versus paid search, etc, but that stuff’s done routinely month in month out, as part of managing performance and delivery. But otherwise, the investment was already there.

Which specific digital platforms? Any search?

Everything from Instagram to TikTok to YouTube. A lot of the digital that we’re using there is a combination of discovery media as well as targeted media that might be someone who’s already done some type of shopping action at our site.

There’s some search, but from what we’ve seen [from internal research] there aren’t a ton of customers searching for tariff-free vehicles. We’ve actually seen some of the lower-funnel queries, industry-wide increase week over week and month over month as we headed into mid April. In some ways, [the tariff concerns] have pulled ahead some sales of customers that maybe were [already] in market.

So, more customers have been making purchasing decisions faster, meaning you’re seeing fewer discovery search queries?

Yeah. We’re seeing a lot more category search.

Do you expect to run similar rapid-response campaigns down the line? Do you have to hold back media spend to retain the capacity to do that?

I can’t rule it out. We’re going to continue to do whatever we can to help our customers and be competitive in the market and keep selling good cars. If an opportunity arises where we feel like we can do something on the customers’ behalf, we’ll definitely do it. 

Part of our marketing strategy is to be always on, always strong. A really important part of building our brand is having strong media for all 12 months of the year, and [to try] to have a combination of good, targeted digital media and social media, and also really being in the biggest moments in sports and entertainment at any given time of the year.

The upfronts are due in May and we’re here in New York meeting with partners to reassure them that our plans are to be strong in the market. If there’s partners that are tentative in the market, we would love to be the brand that can take advantage of that.

While others are fearful, we’ll continue to be strong and confident in the market.