Art Direction, Strategy & the Long Game with Justin Yang from BorderX

I was born and raised in the US and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in New York. Living in the city back then was a transformative experience for me because of how lively and culturally rich the place felt. I can recall a day when one of my professors shared Levi’s classic Go Forth campaign for inspiration and that’s what sparked my interest in the field. It was all about how to make people feel and remember something in the most efficient way.

After graduating I started out as a marketing designer, then later became an art director at agencies across LA and New York City. In the past, I worked on brand campaigns spanning F&B to travel to B2B tech. Currently, I’m serving as Creative Director at BorderX, a global digital and creative agency based in Seoul. The core of what we do is help brands reach new markets through globally impactful work.

The brief was simple: position Hyundai MOBIS as a leading mobility solutions provider. From the start, Hyundai MOBIS made it clear they were looking for an innovative approach to their first global launch campaign. We also wanted to do something beyond a straightforward B2B tech explainer.

When it came to strategy, we set up creative guardrails based on what content our target audience (Millenials & Gen-Z) consume naturally, and to no surprise, it’s music and comedy. Our initial ideas were all based on this, even pitching the idea of doing a music video-style film. We ultimately landed on these comedic narratives that showcase Hyundai MOBIS’ tech in entertaining and relatable ways.

Move Improved represents a foundational creative practice called ‘wrapping the pill in bacon.’ The pill is the brand promise or USP you want the audience to internalize, and the bacon is the creative that makes that process enjoyable. Everything we put out into the world asks for your time and attention, so it better be fun to watch - that’s one of the driving philosophies behind our process.

One thing we did was intentionally simplify the narrative. The B2B tech category is full of technical buzzwords, the average person is desensitized to them. Since we targeted a mass audience beyond B2B personas, we needed to condense Hyundai MOBIS’ brand promise into something simplistic and universally understood, hence ‘Move Improved’ and the short films that followed.

I’ll paraphrase author Al Ries here to describe part of the ideation process - we needed to first understand that most people’s minds are oversimplified (when consuming advertising) as a result of an overcommunicated society. And the way to get into the oversimplified mind is the oversimplified message.

Another thing was how we balanced humor and relatability in the hero films. We partnered with a director who has experience working with skilled improv actors to achieve this, rather than going for prescriptive, line-by-line performances. The absurdity needed to be grounded in relatability in order to resonate with people.

Hyundai MOBIS, historically, was often mistaken for a car manufacturer, rather than a mobility tech innovator. Clearly establishing what MOBIS is and does was part of our answer in addressing this. There were early talks about whether or not the creative should be solely based in highlighting this misinterpretation. Ultimately, focusing on Hyundai MOBIS’ own story was enough to get people to truly understand the nature of their business, and by extension, why it matters to them.

Secondly - navigating a generational shift away from our category. Millennials engaged the least with B2B content, and Gen-Z is driving less. We tailored our strategy to bridge this gap, focusing on category exposure while taking a humorous, nontraditional approach to B2B marketing. This was a strategic choice to reflect the consumption preferences of our target.

It will sound cliché, but just go for it. If you don’t place, just try again next time. The one way to guarantee that you’ll never succeed is if you don’t try. And I think failure is a great way to build confidence; once you realize that failure is not that bad, it’s easier to just go for things. It may help to have this mindset: “if I win, great. If I don’t, great. What matters is that I tried.”

I think that sums up our approach to B2B tech marketing.