In the past year, Vine has made the tran­si­tion from a plat­form with the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of mere­ly enter­tain­ing users, to one that adver­tis­ers are now active­ly lever­ag­ing as a way to reach and engage with con­sumers. Acquired by Twit­ter in late 2012, the micro video shar­ing plat­form has fast become one of the most pop­u­lar social media net­works, and thus one of the most desir­able net­works for brands to deliv­er a mar­ket­ing push.

Vine is incred­i­bly pop­u­lar, espe­cial­ly amongst teenagers, and brands such as Pep­si and Coke have already worked on cam­paigns with pop­u­lar stars on the plat­form – nick­named Vin­ers – to mar­ket their prod­ucts.

Oper­at­ing to the plat­forms strict six sec­ond for­mat has no doubt been a chal­lenge for brands, how­ev­er the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the plat­form, Twit­ter inte­gra­tion, and incred­i­bly strong per­for­mance on mobile has meant brands such as Coke have had suc­cess with the plat­form. The fol­low­ing Vine fea­tur­ing Greg Davis for the #sharea­coke cam­paign had 8.5 mil­lion views (or “loops”) as of this writ­ing.

Introducing #HyundaiHank

The lat­est brand to dive into the deep end with Vine is Hyundai Motor Corp. The #Hyundai­Hank series is rolling out on Vine and Twit­ter, and actu­al­ly fea­tures David Matathia, Hyundai’s direc­tor of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. You can check out the adven­tures of #Hyundai­Hank here. Matathia spoke about the con­cep­tion of the idea:

“We know that car shop­pers draw influ­ence from every­where, so this Vine exper­i­ment is our lat­est effort to pro­vide them infor­ma­tion in unique ways. There’s so much great con­tent to share about the entire­ly new Sonata. We know we only have so much time due to the nature of Vine, so enter­tain­ing and bite-sized sto­ries are a great way to quick­ly com­mu­ni­cate a lot of use­ful infor­ma­tion. We also know we have to respect the com­mu­ni­ty that’s on the platform—which is fun, cre­ative, and crafty—and cre­ate con­tent that aligns with their sen­si­bil­i­ties. Our solu­tion? #Hyundai­Hank was born.”

#Hyundai­Hank cen­ters around a 3D action fig­ure who expe­ri­ences sev­er­al fea­tures of Hyundai’s 2015 Sonata such as its HID Xenon Lights, Rear Back­up Assist, and Panoram­ic Sun­roof.

Cre­at­ed and exe­cut­ed by Inno­cean’s in-house social team, the Vines were pro­duced in a tra­di­tion­al stop motion-style, using old-school craft mate­ri­als such put­ty, thread, and wood­en dow­els to ani­mate the char­ac­ter.

Hyundai and Inno­cean hope the con­tent’s light­heart­ed and infor­ma­tive tone will be a hit with fans on the social media plat­form.

“Prod­uct sto­ries told in the span of six sec­onds can either fall incred­i­bly flat or be delight­ful­ly enter­tain­ing,” said Greg Braun, exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tor at Inno­cean USA. “So it can be a chal­leng­ing — but also extreme­ly fun — exer­cise. You have to avoid the temp­ta­tion of cram­ming too much action and infor­ma­tion into each con­cept and just tell your sto­ry in a very focused, effi­cient way.”

Tying in with the Hyundai Sonata’s cam­paign: “Mak­ing Every Day, Less Every­day,” #Hyundai­Hank nat­u­ral­ly built on the idea of mix­ing the slight­ly extra­or­di­nary with every­day use­ful­ness and prac­ti­cal­i­ty.

As Braun explained:

“There’s also some­thing inher­ent­ly charm­ing about stop-motion ani­ma­tion and all the crafti­ness that comes along with it. It has a fun, play­ful vibe that doesn’t take itself too seri­ous­ly. And it’s just the per­fect aes­thet­ic for Vine.”

Gone In 6 seconds… But Not Forgotten

#Hyundai­Hank is a good exam­ple of a brand embrac­ing a pre­vi­ous­ly untest­ed tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, adapt­ing to medi­um and for­mat, as a means of deliv­er­ing con­sumer-cen­tric mar­ket­ing. As new apps and star­tups con­tin­ue gain trac­tion, and as con­sumers use an increas­ing num­ber of apps in their every­day lives, hav­ing the agili­ty to lis­ten, adapt, and com­mu­ni­cate with con­sumers in the ways they are inter­act­ing with each oth­er will be a impor­tant way to raise brand aware­ness for all B2C busi­ness­es.