Hyundai have been in the UK since 1982 when the Pony was launched, since then they have grown from humble origins to become one of the most popular car manufacturers in the country.

However, Hyundai suffered from an image problem over the years. Many people thought they meant cheap, boring cars that were pretty awful and not something to aspire to (important in the UK car market).

Over the years, Hyundai have fought against this by releasing truly great cars onto the market with their performance division and their impressively efficient electric cars that earned them a positive reputation and more premium image.

At this point another problem emerged, the British population seem to love anglicising the names of foreign companies. Be it Lidl, IKEA and of course Hyundai – people up and down the country were saying the name wrong.

Turns out it’s Hi-un-day rather than Hy-un-die – who knew!

In America, Hyundai released an advert in 2008 during the lucrative marketing period that is the Super Bowl pointing out how the name is pronounced in a new way off the back of winning an award.

This week, Hyundai announced their new advertising campaign in the UK following the same premise of enlightening the nation on how to pronounce their name in an amusing way.

‘High End Pie‘, ‘High ‘n’ Dye’, ‘Highland Eye’: all fictitious businesses created briefly by Hyundai to make light of how people mispronounced their name.

You may be wondering why Hyundai are going to all this trouble, does it really matter how their name is said? Well, their managing director seems to think so…

“Hyundai is a young, innovative and progressive brand which has transformed with great speed. We are proudly Korean with real character and purpose. With this campaign, we want to inject a little humour and personality to our brand which we hope will encourage more people to learn more about Hyundai.”

I think the main aim of this campaign is to raise brand awareness, people will be bemused by how to actually say Hyundai and will talk about it on social media, with their friends or by writing pointless articles.

All this means more people are talking about Hyundai and more people are aware of Hyundai which can only be a good thing. Additionally, this advert is actually quite humorous which may also show that Hyundai understands the British market – something a customer would appreciate.

In short, Hyundai is a global business and like so many global brands it wants to unify its image. Nothing wrong with that, especially when you do it in such a way as this.

Do comment your thoughts below.