Say goodbye to “old luxury” in Hyundai-owned Genesis’ Super Bowl ad, which stars celebrity couple Chrissy Teigen and John Legend heralding an age of “new luxury” in the form of the brand’s GV80 SUV.
The 60-second ad from Innocean goes for humor—a rare marketing element among high-end automakers—with a roster of quirky guests at Teigen’s dinner party, plus Legend’s milking of his “Sexiest Man Alive” title, which People magazine awarded him in 2019. It ran in the game’s second quarter.
The luxury car segment “always had a little bit of trouble laughing at itself. They all act like consumers have had their sense of humors surgically removed,” Bob Rayburn, executive creative director at Innocean, told Ad Age. “Luxury should be fun,” he adds, while poking fun at other luxury car ads that deploy “messaging that acts like their car features are curing polio.”
The star-studded Genesis ad is one of two Hyundai aired during Super Bowl LIV; the other, also handled by Innocean, is titled “Smaht Pahk” and embraces all things Boston while advertising the South Korean automaker’s Sonata sedan.
BRAND: Hyundai Genesis
AGENCY: Innocean
QUARTER AIRED: Q2
SUPER BOWL: LIV
YEAR: 2020