What you need to know:

• Kia is in its 21st year as major sponsor of the Australian Open and is reaping the fruits of a longstanding relationship. Its rebrand early last year with a new logo and platform was hampered by supply chain issues, but a major event has given it a competitive advantage and massive brand building platform.
• Once known for "cheap" vehicles, Kia is now "pumping equity into the brand", says General Manager for Marketing Dean Norbiato. 
• The association with other luxury sponsors – Rolex, Ralph Lauren and Penfolds, for example – is bringing a halo effect as Kia launches a redesigned electric vehicle.
• Association with the new logo is expected to be close to 100 per cent, despite many vehicles delivered last year still branded with the old logo, Norbiato says. There’s a big boost after the Australian Open.
• Meanwhile, Norbiato claims some people bought tickets for the Open just to see Kia's new electric car. He's never seen anything like the level of interest.

Kia’s Arena

When Kia launched its new brand platform in early 2021, none of its vehicles on sale in Australia had the new logo. ‘Movement that Inspires’ was the new slogan, but supply chain delays meant there was little movement for newly branded vehicles.

More than a year on, however, the major rebrand and a concerted move to inject equity into the Kia name is starting to pay dividends, the company’s General Manager of Marketing, Dean Norbiato, says. And the brand’s 21-year partnership with the Australian Open has been a key driver of that.

For 21 years, Kia has been the major sponsor of the Australian Open, which is arguably the biggest sporting event in the world each January. Millions watch live, both in Australia and abroad. At its pre-Covid peak, 800,000 people entered Melbourne Park. It was still about half that this year – four full MCG crowds.

Few brands have the depth of experience leveraging a major sporting event so thoroughly, and Kia makes the most of it: A major sponsorship with broadcast partner Nine, cross-channel digital campaigns, a social strategy, influencers, on-ground vehicle showcases, a B2B corporate hospitality suite on site, augmented reality clips and more. It is a full-scale operation. In previous years, a fleet of Kia Ubers ferrying tens of thousands of people to the event – every one of them got to experience travelling in a Kia.

Shifting gears: Drive up market

For most of those years, Kia was primarily a competitor on price and value for money.  

“If you don't pump equity into the brand, there's going to be someone who comes underneath you, ultimately, and offers a cheaper price and then you're going to be competing to the bottom,” Norbiato says.

“Whereas we wanted to pump equity into the brand so we'll be offering something that consumers want to buy, not just for a rational reason – that will still be there – but for more emotional cues. And associating with premium events like the Australian Open has allowed us to do that and view that level of premium-ness onto the Kia brand.”

Walking around Melbourne Park, it is immediately evident the brands attached to the tournament are almost exclusively associated with luxury: Rolex, Penfolds, Piper-Heidsieck champagne, Emirates. The ball kids are dressed by Ralph Lauren (a pair of their shoes will set a visitor back $269).

“We're surrounded by the likes of Emirates, Rolex, and to have Kia spoken in that vernacular no doubt helps, again, push us into the premium space as a brand. But in being premium, we essentially want to be premium for all,” Norbiato says.

“We want to have a car that can be your first car or a car that you've always aspired to in the absolute top of the echelon of electric vehicles as well… The test of, 'do you really like the car?' is when you lock it and you walk away and, do you look back? We want to make Kia owners feel proud to look back at the car they've just locked. That’s their car.”

Still pumping brand despite supply chain crunch

Every day, Norbiato gets an update on the latest sales and inquiry data. Last year, Kia sold more than 67,000 vehicles. It was the fifth most popular make in Australia, with a 21 per cent increase in sales on 2020 according to VFacts figures – a stronger post-Covid rebound than any other top 10 brand except MG, the former British sports marque re-entering Australia under Chinese ownership.

Challenges sourcing semiconductor chips and delivering vehicles has hit Kia, but it has prompted a renewed focus on brand messaging rather than retail targeting.

“We don't have to lead with retail messages and we can use this opportunity to lean more into the brand space and build our brand,” Norbiato says.

“Last year it was a line in the sand moment with the new logo that we could very much move forward confidently as this new brand. Whilst the money has been tight, we have been able to channel it into more brand related initiatives.”

Early last year, brand association testing found just 26 per cent of Australians could recognise the new logo. After the delayed Australian Open last year, that leapt to 56 per cent. By December, it had crept up to 78 per cent, and Norbiato expects that to be close to 100 after this recent blockbuster tournament. Ash Barty's grand final victory peaked at 4.3 million viewers, according to OzTam. 

“There is no better platform, in our opinion, than the Australian Open to do that,” he says. “The share of voice and the cut through that you get in a sport like tennis has been hugely advantageous for us as a brand as we go through that journey of onboarding a new logo.”

After the tournament, Kia prepares a dossier of inquiry data, conversion numbers, and softer metrics to measure uplift, like brand attributes and association, intention, and level of consideration.

“It is like A Beautiful Mind as we pull all this together,” Norbiato says. “But as an industry, we're flush with data. It's just ensuring that we analyse it accordingly so then we can build and understand what works. Because we're in the real world. Not everything works, unfortunately.”

Sod the tennis, I’m here for the car

In 2022, Kia will sell Australians about 500 models of its first fully electric car, the EV6. Norbiato says he has heard of people buying ground passes to the Australian Open just to see the vehicle on display.

“This is the first time I’ve heard this, and I’ve worked in sport for 10 to 15 years,” he says. “It’s usually, you go to the tennis with a ticket and as a by-product, you get to see what’s in there. That’s just one illustration of the power of this vehicle.”

The level of interest in the EV6 is higher than any combustion engine the company has brought to market, Norbiato says: “Almost threefold.” 

Nine partnership crucial to Kia-AO partnership

Kia was both the major sponsor of the Australian Open tournament as well as the major sponsor with Nine, the broadcaster.

“We’ve seen growth on 2020, which was really a standout year. We’ve seen strong single digit growth. We’ve seen some record growth in our BVOD (broadcaster video on demand) viewing as well. We’ll get to market with some information about our VOZ and Total TV viewing, but we’re delighted with the overall numbers,” Matthew Granger, Nine’s Director of Sales for Sport, says.  

“When you reflect on the whole summer, the number of great moments throughout the three or four weeks in itself is extraordinary.”

In January, Tennis Australia unveiled the brand new Kia Arena, a 5,000-seat show court next to Rod Laver Arena. “As soon as I saw it, it had like this amazing race track roof on it,” Norbiato says.

“And the first thing we said is we want to put a car on that roof. [Nine] weren't sure whether we meant a literal car or an augmented reality car. So fortunate for them it was an augmented reality.”

Granger remembers the conversation. “Dean [Norbiato] is very excitable and he likes firsts a lot,” he says. “We weren’t quite sure, but we knew what he was trying to achieve… the augmented reality piece, I mean, we built from the ground up for Kia to sit on top of that stadium.”

The next step for Nine, he says, is reviewing the campaign and the deliverables clients asked for. Kia, and other sponsors, will do the same in preparation for next year. Planning starts in a few months. The job is not done for Kia. 

“It's being agnostic to each channel and not just rolling out the same playbook each year,” Norbiato says.

“I'm a brand marketer at heart. We have a really strong performance-based team and a really strong digital manager who is excellent at brand, but then also performance as well.

“Our biggest challenge strategically was perceived versus actual quality – we need to bridge that gap. We're very much on a brand journey as we look to educate as many people and tell them what ‘Movement that Inspires' means."