Kia Firings Nothing to Do With Ad Campaign, Sources Say
Christie Schweinsberg Ward's AutoWorld, Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM

The recent firing of Kia Motors America's top two executives had nothing to do with a cheeky new advertising campaign but everything to do with the desire by its new top official to clean house, sources tell Ward's.

“When all this (firings) went down, Ahn (Byung-mo, KMA's newly appointed chairman, president and CEO) had never even seen that ad,” says a person familiar with events Feb. 8, when KMA CEO Len Hunt and marketing chief Ian Beavis were summarily dismissed. “It hadn't even started running,” one source says.

The ad in question was a Kia TV commercial airing in the U.S. promoting a President's Day sale featuring a soap-on-a-rope replica of Millard Filmore, who the ad says is best known as the first president to have running water.

An earlier media report said South Korean executives who saw the TV spot didn't like it and generally found no humor in other Kia advertising, as well, preferring Kia vehicles be presented in a serious manner.

Rumors about the ouster of Hunt and Beavis have been rampant, with one story claiming both were at the airport waiting to board a flight to the National Automobile Dealers Assn. conference in San Francisco when they were approached by a Kia executive.

Not true. Ward's learns the two were contacted separately. KMA human resources executives met with the men individually in the Los Angeles area to inform them of their dismissal. Neither man was informed why he was being fired, says the source, refuting a rumor Hunt was punished for publicly detailing a disagreement with Korean management at a Kia dealer council meeting.