Dad forgot the baby’s Binky. It’s so relatable, and with fabulous flourishes of hyperbole, Kia’s Super Bowl ad is hilariously funny. Plus Kia saves the day. There’s not much more you could want from an ad for a family car.
The 60-second spot by David & Goliath and directed by celebrated film director Dante Ariola of MJZ, kicks of Kia’s Super Bowl campaign.
The drama is amped up with the soundtrack, Gonna Fly Now, (theme from “Rocky”) and you can’t help but cheer for Binky Dad and his Telluride X-Pro, the champs of this story of sheer grit and rugged determination to beat the odds.
Finally, Binky Dad makes it home to find a huge crowd of fans, firemen, police, and reporters on his doorstep. He triumphantly recovers Binky and the crowd goes wild. Everyone following the story celebrates. Binky Dad arrives back at the mountain resort, out of breath, and heroically presents the Binky to his baby who, spits it out immediately. You see, Dad had grabbed the green Binky, you see, and his 1-year-old daughter only likes…the blue one. As the commercial ends, Binky Dad takes off in his Telluride X-Pro once again, headed home to get the right Binky.
But the story doesn’t end there. Audiences across America can tune in to see what happens when Binky Dad makes it home to retrieve the blue binky. In a first, Kia launches the first-ever Super Bowl commercial that ends on TikTok – with three alternate endings that went live this morning, 2/9 on the brand’s TikTok channel. https://www.tiktok.com/@kiausa
The three endings here, here and here, show entertaining scenarios where Binky Dad runs into even more trouble trying to get the blue binky — like finding the binky on a table near the door with a note reminding him not to forget it, and watching in horror as his robot vacuum eats the blue binky and finally finding a variety of blue binkies in a drawer, but instead of trying to figure out which is the right one, he quickly pulls out the entire drawer to take it back to his baby girl.
“Every year that we’ve been in the big game, we don’t just create a Super Bowl spot, we want to create a Super Bowl experience, one that lives on beyond the game. One that not only captures the hearts and minds of millions of viewers, but engages them in a way that’s aspirational, philanthropic and/or simply fun. Last year along with our Robo Dog ad, we created an AR experience for viewers to interact with the endearing pup and bring Robo Dog into their living rooms,” stated David Angelo, founder and creative chairman of David&Goliath.
“For this year’s game we created a 360 campaign to first show, in a fun and exciting way, just how rugged and capable the new Telluride X-Pro is when faced with a larger than life, unexpected adventure as illustrated in our ‘Binky Dad’ spot. That the Telluride X-Pro is so adaptable, so comfortable, and so well-designed, it will make you want to go on adventure again…and again. Then building on the excitement of the spot, we created a way to keep the story going by creating relatable, endearing scenarios to the spot that end on TikTok – which has never been done before in a Super Bowl ad.”
“Binky Dad is a very relatable story, one of a regular guy willing to go to any length to keep his family happy. But even heroes need a helping hand once in a while, and that is where the new 2023 Kia Telluride comes in,” added Russell Wager, vice president, marketing, Kia America. “The new 2023 Kia Telluride X-Pro is Binky Dad’s trusty sidekick, and this dynamic duo won’t rest until the Binky is returned to its rightful owner.”
In addition to the scripted alternate endings, D&G asked TikTok creators, Addison Bounds (@cooking4wifey), Amber Wallin (@burr_iam) and Billie and Gus (@billie_and_gus), to film their own creative endings that will go live when the spot debuts. And will encourage TikTok users to join in the fun and create their favorite and perhaps unexpected endings to the Binky Dad saga.
Additional campaign assets include 30-, 15- and 06-second cut downs of the hero spot, plus digital and social media extensions.
BEHIND-THE-SCENES FUN FACTS:
- The scene in the LA river was shot near where the unforgettable drag race scene in the movie Grease took place.
- For our LA river scene, we were hoping for some rain, but not too much. Luckily, we got just the right amount. The Telluride X-Pro performed beautifully in the water, even when a couple of the cars in the police escort ended up fishtailing.
- The baby in our commercial was played by a set of twin girls. Both were great. One twin made it into the commercial for the opening scene. And the other twin nailed the pivotal scene at the end.
- To get the shot of the baby spitting out the binky, we put lemon juice on it. One of the babies actually seemed like they liked it. But in the end, it worked out perfectly.
- We only filmed two takes of the jump. And the same Telluride X-Pro made it through both with just minor cosmetic damage. That’s some pretty impressive capability.
- We went through hundreds of other songs before we landed on using the Rocky theme.
- We’d considered using VFX to get the right expressions from the baby, but the looks we got on set ended up being so good, we didn’t need to. So, everything you see the baby do actually happened in-camera.
Credits:
Agency: David&Goliath, LA
Founder & Creative Chairman: David Angelo
Chief Creative Officer: Ben Purcell
Chief of Social Impact: Blake Winfree
Executive Creative Director: Mark Monteiro
ECD & Art Director: Robert Casillas
ECD & Copywriter: Courtney Pulver
Executive Creative Director: Frauke Tiemann
GCD & Art Director: John O’Hea
CD & Art Director: Rory Odani
CD & Copywriter: Jason Miller
Digital & Print Extensions:
Agency: David&Goliath, LA
Founder & Creative Chairman: David Angelo
Chief Creative Officer: Ben Purcell
Chief of Social Impact: Blake Winfree
ECD & Art Director: Robert Casillas
ECD & Copywriter: Courtney Pulver
Executive Creative Director: Frauke Tiemann
GCD & Art Director: John O’Hea
GCD & Art Director: Mike Czako
CD & Art Director: Rory Odani
CD & Copywriter: Jason Miller
CD & Creative Technologist: Christian Madden
Art Director: Carter Waldron
Junior Copywriter: Ashtyn Livingston
Director of Broadcast Production: Paul Albanese
Group Executive Producer: Christopher Coleman
Executive Producer: Juliet Diamond
Managing Director, Integrated Production & Technology Services: Peter Bassett
Executive Art Producer: Cara Nieto
Executive Print Producer – Print Services: Elisa Atwood
Executive Digital Producer: Taryn Waggoner
Senior Digital Producer: Michael Van Pelt
Digital Producer: Julia Minucci
Head of Strategy: Melissa Cabral
Group Strategy Director: Kevin DeStefan
Associate Strategy Director: Kelly Slater
Junior Strategist: Kelsey Hillner
Group Communications Strategy Director: Jeff Cannata
Senior Communications Planner: Emma Merber
Managing Director: Lisa Tanner
Group Account Director: Allison Draskovich
Account Director: Jamie Friedman
Management Supervisor: Courtney Landrum
Senior Account Executive: Brittni Ortega
Senior Account Executive: Madison Herzog
Assistant Account Executive: Barbara Lopez
Product Information Manager: Mark McNaul
Director of Business Affairs: Quynh-An Phan
Associate Traffic Director: Jermelia Holling
Senior BA Manager: Shay Davis
Associate BA Manager: Kristina Van
Director of Project Management: Amy Chiang
Senior Project Manager: Donna Alexander
Production Company: MJZ
Director: Dante Ariola
Director of Photography: Lol Crawley
President/Executive Producer: David Zander
Senior Executive Producer: Eriks Krumins
Producer: Natalie Hill
UPM: Susan Levin
Production Designer: Quito Cooksey
Editorial House: Spinach LA
Editor: Damion Clayton
Edit Assist: Jobe Lowen
Managing Director: Adam Bright
Executive Producer: Jonathan Carpio
Senior Producer: Cristy Torres
Colour: The Mill
Colourist: Paul Yacono
Senior Colour Producer: Denise Brown
VFX: The Mill
Executive Creative Director: Chris “Badger” Knight , John Leonti
Creative Director: Michael Gregory
VFX Supervisor: Rod Jimenez Baena
Executive Producer: Hillary Thomas Producer: Emily Stave
Shoot Supervisor: John Leonti, Michael Gregory, Rod Jimenez Baena
2D Lead Artist: Samuel Shiflett
3D Lead Artist: Monique Espinoza
Motion Graphics: Greg Park
Production Coordinator: Lachie Wappet
Mix Facility: Margarita Mix
Sound Designer & Mixer- Nathan Dubin
Assistant Engineers: Sean Melia & Mike Murzyn
Executive Producers: Whitney Morris and Paula Arnett
Operations Manager: Brian Frank
Operations Assistant: Matthew Horist
