Background information

How to rebrand, focus on innovation and sustainability, and roll out a campaign that maximises reach within a niche target group? In 2021, car brand Kia challenged sales house DPG Media Advertising and Havas Media in Belgium to roll out a campaign based on these KPIs.

DPG Media Advertising and Havas Media took up the challenge – with success. The campaign not only reached 75% of the target group, but it also created a first in the Belgian advertising world, as we’ll see in this week’s egtabite.

Innovation, minimal waste and maximum reach

Aiming to become one of the leaders in mobility, Kia Belgium turned to DPG Media Advertising and Havas media with a new brand strategy. The assignment and KPIs were as follows:

• Carry out the new brand positioning as innovatively and cost-effectively as possible with a new TV spot as basis.
• Create awareness among Kia’s new target audience: innovators, early adopters of new technologies (= Mobility Individuals) and drivers that are considering purchasing a new car.
• Roll out the campaign with as little waste as possible and maximum reach.

Campaign video

100% data-driven

DPG Media Advertising, in collaboration with media agency Havas Media, opted for an approach that was completely data-driven instead of a traditional, linear TV plan. The campaign was due to start in the traditionally calmer summer period. Therefore, all steps were taken to build up reach accumulation over a longer time frame.

Step 1: Addressable TV for Wide Range

Kia’s TV commercial went live via Addressable TV on DPG Media’s channels. In this fashion, a large reach was quickly achieved without waste outside of the target group. After one week, 53% of the target audience had been reached. That figure rose to 83% after several weeks.

Step 2: Maximise the reach online

The sales house then shifted into second gear with an online video campaign on newspaper sites HLN.be, HLN Drive and VOD platform VTM GO, with a special focus on the target group. Readers of articles about new cars, car tests and car insurance were thus able to see the new Kia spot online. This again resulted in a spot-on result, with a reach of 67% within the target group.

Step 3: Retargeting the target group through a combination of online & offline data

DPG then applied an innovative approach: retargeting based on combining digital data from step 1 (Addressable TV) and step 2 (Online Video) with ‘offline’ data from Telenet’s set-top boxes. By using a data bunker they were able to secure all data. A data clean room made it possible to match the information. Thanks to this, another 2000 households of previously unreached Mobility Intenders were successfully retargeted via Addressable TV. Furthermore, this was the first time in Belgium that a media company connected digital first-party data to offline data from a different technology.

Result: a first for Belgium in innovative advertising and media use with 75% reach

The Kia summer campaign reached more than 130,000 households, representing an impressive 75% of the target.

Kia was very enthusiastic about the advanced approach. “New technologies and innovation are central to Kia,” says Sander Van de Wiele, Communication Manager at Kia Belgium. “DPG Media Advertising’s new campaign approach, therefore, fits in perfectly with our philosophy of constant innovation. We have reached our target group in a very targeted way in a smart way to introduce them to our new brand.”

For Julie Neyman, Director of Advertising Sales Belgium at DPG Media Advertising, it is not just this one trajectory: “With this approach, we have not only gone 100% client-centric, but we also took Kia’s rebranding campaign to the next level by deploying our first-party digital data. The combination of digital data and set-top box data allowed us to maximize the reach of our media. We are looking forward to new challenges with customers such as Kia Belgium, where we can work innovatively based on our media solutions to once again present top results.”

Hugues Rey of Havas Media Belgium is also very satisfied with what this collaboration has achieved: “At Havas, we invest in media that matters. Our unique Media Experience (Mx) model provided the right basis that allowed us to set up a unique, innovative and meaningful campaign for KIA together with DPG and Telenet. More than ever, this campaign demonstrates the importance of good cooperation within our media world between all the different actors. Thanks to good interaction between the customer, media agency, management and operators, we succeed with a strong local anchoring in making an innovative difference in our increasingly globalising market.”