Kia had prospered as a value car brand over the last eight years. With the launch of their new small family car, the cee’d, Kia wanted to reposition the brand around design and quality, to enable them to build their profit margin and compete in the UK market.

The car buying public had a fixed view of Kia as a value-for-money brand that we would need to confront if we were to move forward.

We launched a bold campaign for the Kia cee’d which didn’t attempt to hide its motives and was upfront in the message that it was “Designed to change your mind.”

The first ad showed someone’s mind being changed about Kia from indifference to desire, emphasising the car’s class-leading design.

The second ad showed the car going into a time machine to be proved ‘Futureproof’, emphasising the cee’d’s quality with its unique seven-year warranty.

The cee’d launched in 2008, a year when the UK tipped into recession and the car market went into steep decline. Kia was the only non-niche brand to show growth. Kia’s management attributed this to the ‘designed to change your mind’ campaign.

• In 2008, car market sales dropped 11.3%; Kia showed growth of 6.6% volume

• Tracking showed messages taken out from the advertising were overwhelmingly about style, design, quality, warranty and image rather than price and value.

The shift from indifference to desire as shown in the ad had become a reality - 23% said the Kia ad had made them much more likely to consider cee’d, versus only 14% average for competitors.