Speaking to journalists in Melbourne this week, KMAu chief operating officer Damien Meredith revealed the Stinger’s first advertising push would launch early in the New Year.
“Digital, outdoor, TVCs (television commercials) – the full-blown launch package with Stinger, which we haven’t done yet,” he said.
“We’ve got a huge spend in January with Stinger … many millions.”
Mr Meredith revealed that the advertising will centre on a locally developed commercial, produced by Australian advertising agency Innocean, and said he was confident the Stinger campaign would not fall foul of Australian advertising standards similar to other sportscar ads from competitors.
“You’ve always got to be careful about those (advertising standards) when you’ve got a performance car,” he said. “We think that what we’ve done is safe.
“People will complain about it, but whether or not they will have validity in that complaint, I don’t think so.
“We were very aware of that from day one and we started germinating the idea of how we are going to put a TVC together for Stinger, so I think we’ll be right.”
Since its launch in September, about 90 per cent of all Stingers sold have been powered by the 272kW/510Nm 3.3-litre twin-turbo V6 engine, leaving the 182kW/353Nm turbocharged 2.0-litre four-pot version accounting for just 10 per cent.
However, Mr Meredith said the current sales mix would likely skew less heavily towards the V6 once the brand kicks off its advertising campaign and word-of-mouth spreads about the cheaper four-cylinder version.
“The issue is, until we start our full-blown communication with Stinger, which will be the 1st of January … it’s production driven,” he said.
“What we’re getting is what we’re selling. We expect the Si to build up in sales. I think it will probably be 75-25 (in favour of the V6).”
Initial orders of the Stinger so far have been predominantly for the flagship GT version which is $59,990 before on-roads. This is accounting for 80 per cent of all V6 orders which Mr Meredith revealed is simply to fulfil existing dealer requests.
“It’s more (a case of) what’s landed is selling,” he said.
Mr Meredith said that Kia approached dealers three months ago (and told them) to order the cars for which they were holding orders.
“We said ‘order that car’ – and they were all GTs,” he said.
“We based our orders, our initial three-month order, on what the dealer network had written with customers so we could get those cars out as quickly as possible.”
Mr Meredith revealed that about 20 per cent of Stinger sales have been conquested from Holden, whereas a large number of buyers have traded in existing Kias such as the Sportage.
He said Stinger orders were strong in the west of Sydney and the west of Melbourne as well as in Melbourne’s north east.
“It’s sort of historic (Commodore) SS territory but it’s not really that clear cut.
“The trades will be the interesting thing.”
Overall however, Mr Meredith said he expects fleet sales to account for over a third of Stinger’s overall volume.
“We haven’t started advertising, we haven’t put together a fleet program for Stinger at this point in time because we wanted to focus on the orders that were in place,” he said.
“But I think you will find it will probably be a 65-35 between private sales and fleet sales.”
By Tung Nguyen
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