Reuters, Hyundai Smart-Thinking Campaign Could Be Smarter

Reuters and Hyundai rolled out their “smart thinking” campaign, which links ads for the carmaker to stories pegged as featuring “innovation, forward thinking and intelligence.”

If today’s story choices are an indicator, the methods used to pick the so-called smart stories may need some fine tuning.

One Reuters story with the carmaker’s ads, “Telefonica deal to challenge Slim on own turf,” dissects the Mexican billionaire’s failure to enter the European phone market, which seems to imply an example of not-so-smart thinking.

Another piece with the Hyundai ads, “British motorists face spy in sky monitoring,” outlines plans in the UK to charge drivers to use roads. Some 1.8 million people in the UK have signed petitions against the scheme, aimed at cutting traffic in congested areas. The “smart” thinking in this story is elusive for a car company that presumably wants people to drive more, not less.

News stories about the ad campaign stressed the “separation of church and state” between ad sales and editors at the news service. That’s a good thing journalistically, though Reuters and Hyundai may well benefit from having a wise editor or two to review the “smart” story choices.