Everyone must love the return of the human-sized hip-hop hamsters in the 2010 Kia Soul “this or that” commercial, running during this holiday season. Whatever the spot does for Kia sales, it sports a sequence that borrows a bit of Apple’s “this,” and puts the competition into the “that” category.
The spot in the award-winning campaign from the David & Goliath agency is based on the Black Sheep’s 1991 track “The Choice is Yours.” Kia’s hamster rappers divide the world into “this” and “that,” with the latter being cheap and bad. You can have a Kia Soul or a car made from a cardboard box.
“You can get with this, or you can get with that,” the spot repeats over and over. It’s a lot of fun.
In one sequence, the hamsters are riding in the Soul and watching the Black Sheep video on an iPhone. The audio tells us that we can “get with this,” which I understood as meaning the Apple mobile device. The next shot, the “that,” is a hamster driving a clothes dryer.
Who knew that the iPhone’s capacitive touchscreen works for hamsters?
Here’s the thing: the shot with the iPhone or iPod working in the Kia isn’t so much about the automobile. More to the point, the shot is not about how it’s easier to use an iOS device in a Kia than in the competition.
Instead, it’s all about the “this” user value. Apple has plenty of “this.”
Customers want excellent, high-quality products that just work, are reliable, and are hip. That describes the Apple brand. But customers are less sure about Kia’s Soul, so the spot borrows a bit of the Apple “this” values with a placement of the iPhone.
Of course, all the other smartphones on the market are automatically “that.”
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