Parody is a difficult advertising angle. It requires reaching a target audience and that the audience recognizes the parody. This brings me to Hyundai and a recent Top Gear parody. While the ads are humorous, there is a disconnect. It requires the target audience of a Hyundai ix35 (known as the Tucson in the United States) watches Top Gear, a British only television that skews towards high performance supercars.

Despite the mismatch, I believe Hyundai is using this as viral marketing to reach an audience they normally can’t touch – the car fanatic audience. That audience typically won’t even place Hyundai on their list of future cars (excluding the Genesis Coupe). This parody gets Hyundai recognition for being a brand with personality – a trait that fanatics crave, which turns into word-of-mouth – the most powerful form of advertising.

The moral of the story is that is you are mismatching your target audience and parody audience, you better have a bigger plan in place. Hyundai – I commend thee.

As an added bonus, they also created a second ad that parodies the Stig, the masked race car driver on Top Gear.