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Hyundai Motor ad on hearing-impaired taxi drivers wins Silver Lion at Cannes

By Lim Jeong-yeo

Published : June 23, 2019 - 14:42

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Hyundai Motor Group’s “The Quiet Taxi” commercial won the Silver Lion at the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the group said Sunday.

Global advertisement agency Innocean Worldwide produced the film, with Jeremy Craigen as the chief creative officer.


(Hyundai Motor Group) (Hyundai Motor Group)


Touted as the world’s biggest celebration of creative advertisements, the 66th Cannes Lions took place in France from June 17 through Friday. Over 30,000 commercials from 89 countries competed.

The award-winning “The Quiet Taxi” is a 4 1/2-minute video that features the company’s audio-tactile conversion technology, which enables the hearing impaired to drive more comfortably.




The ATC technology delivers sound information a driver must be aware of in visual and tactile ways. The system can distinguish between the sirens of a police car, firetruck or ambulance, as well as from the honk of a regular vehicle, and shows the information in an image through a head-up display. At the same time, the steering wheel vibrates and lights up with light-emitting diodes. The same works for the proximity alarm driving in reverse.

For the documentary-style commercial, Hyundai Motor featured Seoul’s very first taxi driver with a hearing impairment, Lee Dae-ho, with Lee’s daughter as the narrator of her father’s story.

The video has been met with enthusiasm on YouTube, where the English version of the clip had as of Sunday garnered over 8.6 million views since its upload in January. The Korean version had been viewed nearly 7 million times.

“The Quiet Taxi” also picked up four awards at the 2019 New York Festival and one at the 2019 One Show, prior to the Cannes Lions.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)