By Myung, SeHwan
Domestic Marketing Team






Mia (Han, Hyo-joo) has just come back from studying overseas and heads toward the airport parking lot. There, she discovers Yoo-gil (Kim, Dong-wook), a doctor, passed out from drinking too much. Mia helps him into her car and drives him home. Romance blossoms between the two. Mia’s best friend Sehee (Lee, Chae-young) is a hotelier whose goal is to find a rich man but finds herself in love with an average guy, Soo-ho (K-will).

K-will is one of Korea’s top-grossing singer and most popular search item on various music sites with his song “Didn’t get to tell you I love you.”

The two paragraphs above sound like something you’d hear on an entertainment show, don’t they? Actually, they’re closely linked to marketing activities at Kia Motors in Korea.

Expanding on the Korean-wave (hallyu) in the region, they’re all part of “Soul Special” that uses a marketing technique called “branded entertainment.”

Soul Special is a 60-minute long musical drama where Kia Soul is the main character. The music video is revealed in 5-minute installments on online and cable TV broadcasts. Additionally, contents of Soul Special are re-packaged in various formats such as TV ads, internet promotional videos, radio commercials, mobile caller ring tunes and music videos of participating artists, to give customers a multi-faceted experience of the Soul brand.

Since the end of September, Soul Special is being broadcast in 12 installments of 5-minute long videos every Tuesday and Thursday on Naver (search portal) and Cyworld (a local social networking site), two of the most popular websites in Korea. Interest in the musical drama has jumped with every episode, resulting in it being the first online drama to go viral with more than 2.7 million hits.

Here’s a link to the Soul Special video with English subtitles for you to enjoy!