Changing the Way You View the Hyundai Badge

"Wobbles the Mind" (wobblesthemind) 06/26/2016 at 13:59 • Filed to: Hyundai

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It’s easy to see this as a stylized “H” that stands for “Hyundai.” That’s what it is afterall! However, I think Hyundai is on track to turn this image around. As an enthusiast that supports this brand and all they are working for, I want to assist in that change of perception.

The first thing Hyundai will need to do is keep people from seeing the letter “H.” Instead, we need to see this emblem as an abstract representation of ideas. A symbol. Now the story behind the badge is that it’s of two people shaking hands, which is a great starting point for turning the badge into a symbol.

There are plenty of conclusions you can draw, and portraits of deep meanings that would make a grown man cry at the annual corporate barbecue. However, taking the arbitrary time to romanticize a symbol doesn’t work when the company hasn’t be consistent to those values since day one. It only facilitates the transformation of Hyundai’s own associate’s view points of the badge but not the views of anyone off the payroll. It’s great to let people know the marketing story regardless because it now allows them to look at the badge again and flip it between being an image of an “H” and that of a “ mutual agreement .” That, to me, is where marketing needs to focus. To Hyundai’s credit, all the talk of human centered design needs to be turned into the company ethos and made known constantly.

Right now you’re looking at the italicized Honda logo a bit differently. Notice that when you saw the image, you saw the handshake and that positive image, then I made fun of it and you mind went back to all negativity you know from well over a decade and will continue to hold throughout your lifetime. This is me hopefully proving that it isn’t enough to change the minds of people because we don’t have only one opinion on topics. It will take years of consistently proving that the products and company stand by the symbol and philosophies they market before the world outside of the badge begins to see it as an abstract image. People don’t ever forget, they simply find enough merit to ignore.

* Hyundai, you will need Toyota or Porsche levels of merit to be blessed with intentional ignorance from consumers. *

Changing Perspectives

The best translation for the word “hyundai” is as the word “modern.” We would all agree that modernity wasn’t something we could associate to Hyundai. Until this decade, when the first iteration of the fluidic sculpture design language, their products were impressions of the best parts of past models from other manufacturers designed to be an astounding “decent” instead of “exceptional.” Currently, through my eyes, the products depict a company focused on where they and their consumers will be in the future instead of where they came from. I think Hyundai has recently done a great job of keeping the “modernity” aspect of their name.

With or Without Heritage

Despite what some would say, there is an advantage in not having a true heritage. However, that advantage only comes when you are NOT trying to be known as an automaker. There are no worries of making a proper successor to some model. There are no issues of the brand “losing it’s way.” There is no need to put off the launch of a product until it coincides with an anniversary and everyone is positive that a 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans is possible. Nope, none of that. If the product is ready to go, it gets launched. This is an advantage Tesla has and why we focus so much on new start ups rather than the brands we know. The automotive brands that will have the easiest time being viewed as a technology company are the ones that don’t have a century’s worth of heritage dragging behind them.

The logo above is for Hyundai’s upcoming performance arm, Brand N . Here’s the interesting thing after bringing up being viewed as an automotive company or a technology company, to be a seen as a technology company, not having heritage helps immensely. To be viewed as a legitimate automaker, heritage is immensely important. The best way to build automotive heritage is through consistently making competitive products and, more importantly, showing the performance prowess of your associates and projects. In the automotive world, performance IS technology . Automakers can’t be solely automotive companies anymore. Tesla, Apple, and Google can’t be just technology companies with vehicles for sell. Companies need to be both, they need to be companies focused on automotive technology . This means that Hyundai will have the world to see that performance badge as a stylized “N” first. Then, Hyundai needs to present the badge as a symbol, an abstract shape that denotes partnership between their Namyang R&D Center and Nurburgring focused testing including the “490 laps” standard.

The Brand N Performance Badge

Much like the Hyundai logo, they give you some silly image that the “N” symbolizes the corners of a race track. Albert Biermann, former VP of Engineering for BMW’s M performance brand, translates the connection of the badge and the character of the future models to depict, “a predictable acceleration value, a stable cornering without deviation from the record line, and a powerful linear acceleration when exiting the last chicane.” Yeah, consumers will be thinking those qualities every time they see that letter N slapped on an Elantra instead of, “their cutting off a piece of the M badges to save on production costs.”

Joking aside, much like Cadillac’s V division or the Lexus F brand, it will take about two complete generations of the N models to truly impact the perception of Hyundai’s character. The hope is that everything the N models do will translate into the regular brand and that the eventual consumer view of the Hyundai badge will shift between the following:

A big H meaning Hyundai .

A handshake between the company and the consumer promising to provide products that are focused on being an asset to their lifestyles rather than a frustration.

A big N representing their performance brand.

A symbol of racing and performance that depicts the amount of time and effort that goes into the research and development of models between Namyang and the Nurburgring.

A reminder that Hyundai is focused on modernity and moving forward into the future with you.

All together, within that badge, Hyundai has now made an agreement and is promising to give us performance and technology that will make our lives easier and not hold us back from evolving our lifestyles to be as staid, exciting, or luxurious as we want. The badge is the brand growing right alongside its consumers.

New thinking, new possibilities . Let’s see what you can do, Hyundai.

jkm7680 > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 14:13

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No offense, but tl;dr.

I was expecting like a paragraph. Not a whole essay about the Hyundai logo.

Wobbles the Mind > jkm7680 06/26/2016 at 14:20

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Just read the five bullet points towards the end and you’ll have the points of the article. No worries!

PS9 > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 14:20

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N as a brand is a terrible mistake. It’s a bad idea to make your customers think of a competitor’s products in your branding for pretty obvious reasons. “We want to be M” is what I think of when I see a logo that is only one letter and one color away from that.

There’s nothing wrong with aping BMWs business model, as the entire industry does it. AMG, S(Audi), V(Cadillac). The problem though is none of those other ones make me think of ‘M’. AMG was a tuning house merc brought out. ‘S’ = Special = just a bit better than the still-good standard Audi. ‘V’ = it’s a caddy, but way faster . You see, even though they’re all the same business model, the branding associates that model with your own products , not that of anyone else’s. You can’t imply that you want to be ‘M’ without also implying that you can’t make anything as good as ‘M’ can. If you could, emulating them would not be necessary.

Hyundai should definitely make high-performance trim models in it’s line up, but the marketing for that needs a re-think.

jkm7680 > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 14:24

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That did the trick!

TheBaron2112 > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 14:53

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If I didn’t know any better, I would say this reads like sponsored content by Hyundai’s PR team.

That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 15:02

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I don’t know that there’s anything they can do with that particular logo that’ll make it seem less terrible, enough time has passed that if I was going to start thinking it was a good logo I’d have done it by now. I don’t have a good perception of their logo.

Which is funny, because I think quite highly of the brand. Toyota and Honda kinda took their logo upwards with them, where Hyundai haven't. No shame in changing their logo to something better if they can.

Chasaboo > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 15:07

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They should use the Korean: 

Wobbles the Mind > TheBaron2112 06/26/2016 at 15:08

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I’ll probably do something like this for every automaker. Never know what kinds of opportunities could pop up. Maybe $500 cash back on a new car purchase, a press vehicle for a week, a sweet hoodie...

DoYouEvenShift > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 15:17

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I think every brand should refresh their logo regularly. Keeps thing fresh. Chevy and Ford, both brands that Im a big fan of need it the worse. That gold bowtie and blue oval remind me of old trucks.

Toyota, a brand Im totally neutral of, needs a refresh as well.

DipodomysDeserti > TheBaron2112 06/26/2016 at 17:01

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This is how every post by a Hyundai fanboy is. They've surpassed VW fanboys as the most insufferable.

DipodomysDeserti > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 17:04

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When I think of Hyundai I still think of cheap Korean stuff trying to imitate other stuff. The fact their H logo is similar to Honda and their N logo is similar to M Technic didn’t help this. They should have taken a page out of LG’s book and just done something totally different. It wouldn't work for Hyundai because while LG makes high quality stuff, Hyundai produces shit.

Birddog > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 17:15

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This reads better than Cadillacs current strategery.

TheBaron2112 > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 17:35

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So was your “let’s see what you can do” at the end a figurative open hand pointed in Hyundai’s direction?

Because from the sound of these thousand words on a boring logo, you’re more after an internship in the marketing department than a press car.

Ike > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 17:42

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Oh it’s a H I alway thought it was they were big nine inch nails fans over at Hyundai

Shour, Aloof and Obnoxious > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 18:20

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I think you are giving Hyundai a worse shake than it deserves, and I find it mildly humorous that you invoke names like Cadillac and Lexus in your discussion.

The idea that Hyundai has no true heritage to draw from essentially insinuates that Hyundai has no history, or is merely too young of a manufacturer to have a heritage. I would certainly say that Hyundai has more history and heritage behind its nameplate than Lexus, which came into existence in 1989, and only so that Toyota could move some of their products upmarket. Hyundai as a nameplate has been around since the 60s, and entered the US market 20 years after Toyota did (and three or four years BEFORE Lexus came into being) with the same goal Toyota had when entering the North American market: offering smaller new cars as an alternative to the more expensive offerings of the established market. The only place Hyundai kind of went wrong with their entry into the NA market was underestimating the recovery in quality that Detroit had started to make with their cars around that time. Hyundai had to know that the Excel and the Sonata weren’t going to be as solid as the 323s, Corollas, and Accords; but the Excel and the Sonata would be cheaper than the Japanese offerings, and surely they would be better than a Pinto or a Vega or a Volare, right? Hyundai wasn’t wrong, but the problem was that Detroit wasn’t making Vegas, Pintos, and Volares any longer. And THIS is actually where the reality of Hyundai’s legacy begins, because they weren’t the only nameplate to try the market with this plan: Yugo, Daihatsu, Renault, and Daewoo all took the same gamble, and all failed or left within a decade. Hyundai STAYED. Hyundai PERSEVERED. Instead of accepting the punchline-reputation they’d earned in the 80s and leaving (Daihatsu, Renault), or failing as an auto manufacturer in general (Yugo, Daewoo), Hyundai endured the hard early years, learned what the NA market wanted, and generation by generation, fought to be exactly what they initially set out to be: with the 3rd gen Elantra and 4th gen Sonata, they were both a cheaper alternative to the Protoge/Civic/Camry, and a better choice than a Cavalier/Neon/Contour of the time. With that success, they continued to improve to the point where 30 years since entering the NA market they now complete DIRECTLY with Toyota and Honda in quality, price, and reputation. They didn’t give up, but struggled and persevered and conquered their initial reputation...which is far more legacy or heritage than Lexus, Acura, or Infniti can claim.

Let’s talk Hyundai and Cadillac. Cadillac certainly has a longer, more storied legacy and heritage than Hyundai, even going back to Hyundai’s inception in the 60s. And despite this, Caddy’s recent past (badge engineering of the 80s, FWD AARP-mobiles of the 90s) has been so damning that their recent recent reinvention into a legitimate (and sometimes superior) competitor to BMW/Benz/Audi has been largely ignored or untrusted by the lux-sport market because that market is held by people who are in their 50s, peaking in their careers as their biggest financial burden (children) are no longer a burden. Which concept of Cadillac do you think they bring to mind when you say the name to them: the over-the-top luxobarges of the 50s and 60s, the fire-breathing middle finger to Europe that is the CTS-V and the ELR...or instead, the Cadillac they grew up with, Cimmarons, Allantes, FWD DeVilles, and Cateras? For all of their heritage, Cadillac is struggling mightily to overcome the image of its recent past, despite the fact that those of us who follow the industry closely know they really are the real deal. Thing is, most of us who follow the industry like that, we who call ourselves enthusiasts, we’re not in our 50s, we can’t afford a CTS or an ATS. We’re in our 20s and 30s, and we can afford Elantras and Sonatas. To Hyundai’s market, the Hyundai of THEIR youth is the Hyundai of 10-15 years ago, the Hyundai who started building good cars, and told us, “we know our product is so good, we will back it with a 10-year, 100k mile warranty!” To Cadillac’s market, the Cadillac of their youth is Malaise Era failures and lipstick-on-a-pig badge engineering of the 80s. Who’s is winning...or more accurately, who has won their respective battle, when it comes to Cadillac and Hyundai? Most buyers today don’t think of the terrible Excels and Sonatas anymore; they have overcome that reputation handily.

Hyundai deserves to wear their current badge with pride, and have it established with the same longevity as the 40-year-old Honda H, the century-old BMW roundel, and the 25-year-old Toyota oval. They’ve built a legacy and a heritage by fighting through the weakness of their infancy (where Lexus never experienced any such weakness); struggling, surviving, and improving through adolescence when their equally young colleagues failed, fled, or died; and established themselves as equals to the very companies they’d set out to undercut, something that Cadillac is unable to do, and are now doing what their established Japanese role models were doing 25 years ago, introducing a premium brand and moving upmarket. Hyundai’s badge has been fought for, earned, and established. It’s rooted in failure, perseverance, growth, and eventual quality. We look at a Hyundai H today, and we think, “I would trust this car to get me across the country and back more than a few times...and that sure is a pretty sunroof, too.” It’s just now finally come into its own.

wiffleballtony > Wobbles the Mind 06/26/2016 at 20:02

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The shaking hands Hyundai logo really just affirms in my mind that their products are designed by a committee trying to fill a market segment rather than designing a car that’s good.

Color me jaded, but in my observations Hyundai made their name making pretty blatant imitations of other brands styling. Choosing a letter from your performance brand that is suspiciously close to a certain brand of German performance car that is the de facto standard reaffirms that belief.

random001 > Wobbles the Mind 06/27/2016 at 07:29

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Genesis N-Spec, then? hehe...