Back in October 2022, Kia released a promotional video called "The Sapling." After breaking it down scene by scene, I concluded that its message was way too subtle to appeal to a broader audience, let alone to show off during the Super Bowl. But fast forward to early February 2023, and Kia is more than ready for this NFL final playoff game, with their SUV MVP, the 2023 Telluride SX Prestige X-Pro.
The gist of the ad is pretty simple. A married couple and their baby go on a holiday trip to a mountain resort. After they arrive at the hotel lobby, they discover that the dad forgot the baby's favorite binky.
So, he gets back into his 2023 Telluride SX Prestige X-Pro SUV and floors it to the tune of "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky, while trying to get home as fast as possible to recover the binky. He goes down a hill through a forest and flies through a construction site in slow-motion, all the while, people from around the world are following his journey on the Internet.
When he gets home, the press is already there to cover the moment when he inevitably recovers the binky, in a Rocky training montage fashion. When he returns to the hotel lobby, lo and behold, he got the wrong colored binky, and the baby is not keen on it.
In short, it's easy to relate to the ad's clear-cut message, and on top of that, the entire thing is simply wholesome and funny. It also has the Rocky soundtrack in it, which was another stroke of brilliance from the David&Goliath agency writers. On TikTok, it even has three different endings.
Now returning to the Kia SUV, the 2023 Telluride base model LX starts at around $36,000 with FWD, but the SX Prestige X-Pro AWD edition from the ad comes with a $53,000 price tag. That's without the $1,365 destination charge.
Under the family-friendly hood, you'll find a naturally-aspirated Lambda II 3.8-liter engine that can deliver 291 horsepower (295 ps), with 262 lb-ft (355 Nm) of torque. It also comes with an eight-speed automatic transmission that's standard for AWD, as well as for the FWD versions.
On the outside, the premium package is rocking 18-inch wheels with all-terrain tires that have X-Pro styling. Careful not to get "tricked" by the tires from the commercial!
Because sitting at the bottom of the screen in a semi-transparent font are a few words that can be read only for mere seconds before they magically vanish into thin air. Before they do, the inscriptions tell tales of aftermarket snow tires, and not about the actual all-terrain ones you'd get with the X-Pro version.
Now, while technically this Binky Dad commercial didn't air during the Super Bowl LVII itself, it still counts because it went public just a couple of days before the much-anticipated game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.
For anyone interested, Rihanna will be performing during the halftime show. The singer initially refused to play at the Super Bowl back in 2019, but she recently changed her mind. During an interview for Entertainment Tonight from November 2022, she said that "The Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world, it's an entertainer's dream to be on a stage like that."
Codrin just loves American classics, from the 1940s and ‘50s, all the way to the muscle cars of the '60s and '70s. In his perfect world, we'll still see Hudsons and Road Runners roaming the streets for years to come (even in EV form, if that's what it takes to keep the aesthetic alive). Full profile
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