Kia Optima Promised Customers One Epic Ride at Super Bowl XLV, God of the Seas Was There

The year was 2011, and the world was getting ready to watch Super Bowl XLV. The American football game was set to take place at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Wisconsin-based team won the event by six points, but we aren't going to talk about the football match here. For the first time since 1987, over 100,000 fans were on site to watch the event. But that pales in comparison to the number of spectators following the game from the comfort of their homes.

According to the official numbers, the Super Bowl XLV had set a new record with an average of 111 million US viewers. That's over 35% of the entire US population back in 2011. So it's no wonder why companies line up to advertise during this kind of event.

You could create the most exciting commercial of all time, but it's worth nothing if it doesn't reach a wide enough audience. Turning a profit is the main objective for any given company, and getting to that point as soon as possible is key to the development of the business.

With such a huge event being broadcast live, there's also another benefit to consider. For a short period, you've got everyone's attention. People have developed a sort of immunity to commercials over time and may choose to ignore them while browsing around from channel to channel on a normal day. But during the Super Bowl, a good percentage of the folks watching will be focused on what happens next as they don't want to miss any of the action.

For any company looking to highlight one of its new products, the Super Bowl is commercial heaven. With the game scheduled for February 2011, Fox Sports had sold out all the commercial slots by October 2010.

And getting into one of those slots required a minimum investment of $3 million! That might sound like a lot for an average citizen, but it's a price worth paying for a global corporate giant. As you can imagine or even recall, quite a few automotive companies wanted a piece of the action.

Chrysler promoted the 200 mid-size sedan by working with Eminem, Volkswagen appealed to Star Wars fans for their Passat, while Chevrolet brought out Bumblebee to do the job.

Some companies opted for multiple slots to get the most out of the event, but obviously, that wasn't the case for all the advertisers. Take for instance Kia, who entered the battlefield with a single ad, for the third-generation Optima. This model has also been marketed as the Magentis, and it launched at the beginning of the 21st century.

By all means, this was a rebadged Hyundai Sonata. This car had been developed to replace the Kia Credos, which was in its turn based on the Mazda 626. Now that we've got the "family tree" out of the way, the new third-generation Optima didn't feel as boring and outdated as its predecessors.

It still shared the same platform as a Hyundai - the i40 - but Kia had high hopes that the new design language would help them compete against the likes of Volkswagen and their Passat and Honda with the Accord.

The One Epic Ride commercial shown at the Super Bowl XLV lived up to its name by delivering a mash-up of exciting and unexpected scenes. At first, we see a police officer driving away in a couple's Optima, after tying them up to his motorcycle.

As he's enjoying a drive around the coast, we see a villain-type character in a helicopter coming in to claim the car for himself. It's funny that a "Do Not Attempt" message was prompted during this maneuver as if someone could replicate this at home.

As the villain heads out into the sea, it's clear that he's taking the Optima to what seems to be a billionaire sitting on a yacht. It's there that we get prompted with the leitmotif of this commercial.

And that leitmotif is Desire. But things are about to get even crazier, as the God of the Seas himself emerges holding his trident. As he's contemplating the Optima in the palm of his hand, an alien mothership beams the car up and makes a run for it. As the humanoid-like alien starts driving on what seems to be his home planet, a portal opens up in front of him.

The portal had been opened by a South-American civilization, as thousands of natives gather around to celebrate their newest conquest. Even if you didn't necessarily like the Optima, you just had to admire the creativity behind this ad. This commercial strives to create a desire among potential customers watching, without appealing to any technical information or details about the car.

As all the powerful entities depicted in the video are fighting to get their hands on Kia's newest model, it must be quite good indeed. Instead of paying glorious amounts of cash to bring in a highly-influential celebrity, the South Korean company created influencers of its own by using CGI and widespread archetypes and myths.

While you can't judge the volume of sales just by looking at how influential an ad was, you might notice the upward trend followed by the Optima. Kia sold over 60,000 units in 2009 and 2010 combined. Those figures increased to 84,000 in 2011, and over 150,000 per year for the next consecutive four years.