Kia Returns to Super Bowl with an Epic Adventure and First-Ever Ad That Ends on TikTok

Imagine this…a family of three off on a joyful adventure with their adorable bundle of joy, when, just as they’re ready to check-in at a beautiful mountain resort, a daunting realisation hits. Dad forgot to pack the baby’s favourite binky. Not the binky! Anything but the binky. Hearts race, mom frowns and baby is on the verge of a major meltdown of epic proportions. What’s a dad to do? Without missing a beat, dad, aka ‘Binky Dad’, takes off on what becomes an heroic ride of a lifetime.

Kicking off Kia’s 360 Super Bowl campaign, created by David&Goliath, is an adventure-fueled 60-second spot directed by celebrated film director Dante Ariola of MJZ, which debuted today. The ad follows ‘Binky Dad’ as he immediately jumps in his Telluride X-Pro and goes on an incredible journey to get the binky, before his beloved baby erupts in an explosion of tears.

Set to the iconic and uplifting classic ‘Gonna Fly Now,’ (theme from ‘Rocky’), we can’t help but cheer for ‘Binky Dad’ and his Telluride X-Pro, the champions of this story of sheer grit and rugged determination to beat the odds. Taking a shortcut down a ski slope, through a huge drainage pipe at a construction site, into the LA River, and right through the field in a packed football stadium during a game – they make it through all on and off-road obstacles. Along the way, his story goes viral, with widespread coverage on national news and social media.

Finally, ‘Binky Dad’ makes it home to find a huge crowd of fans, firemen, police, and reporters on his doorstep. He triumphantly recovers the binky and the crowd goes wild. Everyone following the story celebrates. ‘Binky Dad’ arrives back at the mountain resort, out of breath, and heroically presents the binky to his baby who, straightway spits it out. He grabbed the green binky, you see, and his one-year-old daughter only likes… the blue one. As the commercial ends, ‘Binky Dad’ takes off in his Telluride X-Pro once again, headed home to get the right binky.

First-Ever Super-Bowl Commercial Ends on TikTok

But the story doesn’t end there. As part of the 360 campaign, audiences across America can tune in to see what happens when ‘Binky Dad’ makes it home to retrieve the blue binky. In a never seen before initiative, Kia launches the first-ever Super Bowl commercial that ends on TikTok – with three alternate endings that went live this morning, on the brand’s TikTok channel here.

The three endings here, here and here, show entertaining scenarios where ‘Binky Dad’ runs into even more trouble trying to get the blue binky -- like finding the binky on a table near the door with a note reminding him not to forget it, and watching in horror as his robot vacuum eats the blue binky and finally finding a variety of blue binkies in a drawer, but instead of trying to figure out which is the right one, he quickly pulls out the entire drawer to take it back to his baby girl.

“Every year that we’ve been in the big game, we don’t just create a Super Bowl spot, we want to create a Super Bowl experience, one that lives on beyond the game. One that not only captures the hearts and minds of millions of viewers, but engages them in a way that’s aspirational, philanthropic and/or simply fun. Last year along with our ‘Robo Dog’ ad, we created an AR experience for viewers to interact with the endearing pup and bring Robo Dog into their living rooms,” said David Angelo, founder and creative chairman of David&Goliath. “For this year’s game we created a 360 campaign to first show, in a fun and exciting way, just how rugged and capable the new Telluride X-Pro is when faced with a larger than life, unexpected adventure as illustrated in our ‘Binky Dad’ spot. That the Telluride X-Pro is so adaptable, so comfortable, and so well-designed, it will make you want to go on adventure again and again. Then building on the excitement of the spot, we created a way to keep the story going by creating relatable, endearing scenarios to the spot that end on TikTok – which has never been done before in a Super Bowl ad.”

“Binky Dad is a very relatable story, one of a regular guy willing to go to any length to keep his family happy. But even heroes need a helping hand once in a while, and that is where the new 2023 Kia Telluride comes in,” said Russell Wager, vice president, marketing, Kia America. “The new 2023 Kia Telluride X-Pro is Binky Dad’s trusty sidekick, and this dynamic duo won’t rest until the Binky is returned to its rightful owner.” 

To further extend the campaign experience, in addition to the scripted alternate endings, D&G tasked a handful of TikTok creators, Addison Bounds (@cooking4wifey), Amber Wallin (@burr_iam) and Billie and Gus (@billie_and_gus), to film their own creative endings that will go live when the spot debuts. And will encourage TikTok users to join in the fun and create their favourite and perhaps unexpected endings to the Binky Dad saga. 

Additional campaign assets include :30, :15 and :06 cut downs of the :60 spot, digital and social media extensions.

Behind the scene/fun facts on background

1. The scene in the LA river was shot near where the unforgettable drag race scene in the movie Grease took place.
2. For our LA river scene, we were hoping for some rain, but not too much. Luckily, we got just the right amount. The Telluride X-Pro performed beautifully in the water, even when a couple of the cars in the police escort ended up fishtailing.
3. The baby in our commercial was played by a set of twin girls. Both were great. One twin made it into the commercial for the opening scene. And the other twin nailed the pivotal scene at the end.
4. To get the shot of the baby spitting out the binky, we put lemon juice on it. One of the babies actually seemed like they liked it. But in the end, it worked out perfectly.
5. We only filmed two takes of the jump. And the same Telluride X-Pro made it through both with just minor cosmetic damage. That’s some pretty impressive capability.
6. We went through hundreds of other songs before we landed on using the Rocky theme.
7. We’d considered using VFX to get the right expressions from the baby, but the looks we got on set ended up being so good, we didn’t need to. So, everything you see the baby do actually happened in-camera.