Kia Super Bowl ad asks viewers to choose ending

The three-row 2023 Kia Telluride plays sidekick for a desperate dad who forgot his baby’s binky in the automaker’s latest Super Bowl commercial, but the story doesn’t end when the spot is over.

That’s when the fun starts.

Kia is presenting three alternate endings for the 60-second ad exclusively on its TikTok channel to keep the story alive and generate engagement.

After seeing each outcome, Kia wants viewers to share how they’d like the adventure to end, said Russell Wager, Kia America’s vice president of marketing.

The ad is scheduled to debut Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. It will air in the third quarter of Sunday’s game. The spot was created by David & Goliath, Kia’s agency of record.

“TikTok is where the conversation is, more so than Twitter and Facebook and Instagram during the Super Bowl, so we wanted to have that dialogue started before, and carry on afterwards,” Wager told Automotive News. “So we’re just giving them three ways that it could end, and then we’re saying, ‘You tell us how it ends in your mind.’ ”

The ad opens with a couple and their baby checking in at a mountain resort. The father realizes he forgot their daughter’s favorite pacifier and sprints to his Telluride X-Pro, an off-road version of the large crossover that’s new for the 2023 model year.

A bystander catches him speeding off and posts it online with the hashtag “#binkydad,” sparking a social media frenzy.

As the father zips home, the Telluride is seen tearing through snowy terrain, cutting through a football stadium and even going airborne in a construction zone on the hectic journey.

Kia tweaked its typical formula for this commercial. While Wager said the brand typically focuses on the capabilities of its utility vehicles and the adventures consumers can have in them, Kia hasn’t “tried to instill a specific family message” as it is now doing with the binky concept.

The mini-emergency surrounding the forgotten binky is a relatable premise that Wager said should resonate with many parents.

Kia is touting the freshened Telluride at the Super Bowl because it increased production of the crossover by 20 percent in September and wants to keep demand up. Telluride deliveries rose 6.6 percent in 2022 and set a full-year sales record.

Wager said getting onto the Super Bowl stage aids Kia’s long-term growth aspirations.

“You don’t do a Super Bowl spot just to help sell cars for the next 30, 60, 90 days,” he said. “You do a Super Bowl spot because you have a brand story that you want people to remember for a long time.”

The lighthearted touch is a shift from Kia’s 2019 Super Bowl ad when it launched the Telluride. Back then, it served as an inspirational rallying cry for workers at Kia’s West Point, Ga., plant who build the vehicle and have helped catapult the company to success.

Now the Telluride is an established nameplate, and Kia can tell a different story, beyond it being made in America. Super Bowl ads, Wager said, are byproducts of the times they are created in.

Kia’s 2020 campaign centered on fighting youth homelessness. The initiative took on greater importance when the COVID-19 pandemic began a few months later and made it even more critical for youth to have shelter and care.

But the environment is different now.

“Your messaging needs to be aware of the environment that we’re in at that time,” Wager said. “We’re coming out of COVID. Everyone’s ready to make up for two-and-a-half, three years of lockdowns and restrictions and all these things, and I think they want to be entertained a little bit.”

While the spot appears to have only one tiny co-star, there actually are two.

The ad uses twins, with one appearing in the opening scene and the other spitting out the binky at the end.

The ad crew put lemon juice on the binky to make the babies reject it. The baby in the beginning of the ad didn’t seem to mind the lemon juice and just kept sucking on the binky, so Wager said they switched the babies out.

The sibling spit the binky out on the first take.