Like Never Before
Hyundai didn’t need more ads. They needed a mirror. We built two.
OVERVIEW
The brief said Hyundai. The real job was identity.
Two campaigns. Two completely different emotional territories. One for the person who already owns the room and one for the person still working up the nerve to walk in. Most brands would’ve treated them as separate problems. We treated them as the same one.
Both campaigns were built on the same conviction: a car ad is only as powerful as the human truth it’s attached to. Features sell specs. Stories sell identity. And identity, the feeling of control, of arrival, of becoming, is what Hyundai asked us to sell.
ROLE
Art Director
YEAR
2025
SERVICES
- Production
- Creative Direction
- Video Editing
DELIVERABLES
- Hero Ad
- Social cut-downs
CAMPAIGN 01
Magnetic
Man
The brief was simple: launch the New Hyundai Creta not as a car, but as a lifestyle force of nature. Our answer was the Magnetic Man, a persona so effortlessly premium that the world rearranges itself around him.
As Assistant Art Director, I worked across the full creative pipeline: from collaborative round-table sessions where we defined the persona and its visual language, through storyboarding, styling, and post-production, ensuring the “Magnetic” theme felt premium, seamless, and grounded in reality even when objects defied gravity.
The creative challenge wasn’t just visual. It was rhythmic. Every cut had to feel like a beat drop. Every object in flight had to feel inevitable, like the world agreed it belonged to him. That kind of pacing lives in the edit, and this is where storytelling and post-production became inseparable.
“Take Control. Hyundai Like Never Before.”
VEHICLE
Hyundai Creta
INSIGHT
The world moves for the person who owns the room.
CAMPAIGN 02
Si
Decides
Every ambitious person knows the feeling: standing at the edge of something big, paralyzed by “How do I even start?” The Si Decides campaign for the Hyundai Kona doesn’t answer that question, it makes it obsolete.
The concept pivots the audience from the anxiety of the first step to the satisfaction of the arrived moment. Not “How do I begin?” but “How did I pull that off?” The Kona isn’t the car you drive to start your journey. It’s the car you’re already driving when you realize you’ve become someone.
As Assistant Art Director, I contributed to this narrative from the earliest conceptual round tables, shaping the philosophical underpinning of the campaign and translating it into a visual and character-driven language that felt earned, not aspirational in a hollow way.
VEHICLE
Hyundai Kona
TARGET
Professionals and achievers who value both the style of the journey and the destination.
CRAFT NOTES
Two identities, one rhythm.
Every cut in Magnetic Man had to land like a beat drop. That pacing wasn’t a post-production decision, it was a creative directive set in the round table and carried through styling, shot list, and edit in lockstep. Cars make sound. Lifestyle campaigns have to feel like music.
Si Decides had to move in the opposite direction. Less show, more reveal. The challenge was holding an emotional slow-build without losing the audience, so we protected the breath in the edit and let the character’s face do the selling. What looks like restraint on screen is actually a tight choreography between the storyboard, the performance, and the sound design.
Running both in parallel meant the team had to hold two contradictory tonal standards at once: premium and magnetic on one side, grounded and earned on the other. My job as Assistant Art Director was to keep the seams invisible, so each campaign felt like the definitive Hyundai, not a version of it.
WHAT I OWNED
My fingerprints on both campaigns.
On-set art direction
Built every frame from the character outward. Before wardrobe, props, or blocking got locked, we answered one question: who is this person in the real world? Every on-set decision followed from that answer, not from a reference board.
Edit pacing & post
Shaped the rhythm of both hero cuts: the beat-drop cadence of Magnetic Man and the breath-first slow-build of Si Decides. Worked frame-tight with the editor to protect the feel.
Round-table concepting
Contributed to the earliest conceptual sessions that set the philosophical frame for each campaign. Helped the team hold two contradictory tonal territories without collapsing them into one.