How Hyundai and UNDP Turned Grassroots Innovation Into a Global Story
Taking Steps is a 2021 integrated campaign created by Sid Lee for Hyundai Motor Company, released in South Korea in May 2021 as part of the brand's partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, documenting three grassroots sustainability innovators from Nepal, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom through a short film narrated by Jessica Alba and featuring BTS.
Hyundai launched the for Tomorrow initiative alongside the UNDP on September 22, 2020, according to Hyundai News and Undp, establishing a global platform to promote and scale community-based solutions aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The initiative invited local innovators to submit ideas during an open submission period running from October 2020 through April 2021, timed to conclude around Earth Day on April 22, 2021. Taking Steps arrived as the initiative's first major creative milestone, released to mark approximately six months since the programme's founding, as confirmed by undp.org.
In South Korea, the campaign functioned simultaneously as a brand-building exercise and a public interest statement, positioning Hyundai within the growing automotive conversation around environmental responsibility. The film travels across three continents, grounding global sustainability ambitions in the specific decisions of individual innovators whose work has improved life in their own communities. By choosing to tell these stories through a cinematic short film rather than a conventional automotive advertisement, Hyundai signalled that the for Tomorrow platform was not a peripheral corporate social responsibility gesture but a substantive, narrative-led commitment. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100, reflecting strong creative intent and cultural ambition tempered by the challenges of measuring direct commercial impact for purpose-driven work of this kind.
Hyundai built Taking Steps on a consumer insight that purpose and credibility are inseparable. The for Tomorrow initiative was conceived not as advertising but as infrastructure: a discoverable, participatory ecosystem at fortomorrow.org where users could access and share community-based innovations, lending the subsequent film genuine documentary legitimacy rather than the appearance of manufactured goodwill.
In South Korea, the domestic automotive market was navigating significant headwinds in 2021. The automotive industry lost approximately 210 billion dollars in revenue globally that year due to semiconductor shortages and supply-chain disruption, according to illumin.com, a pressure that made brand equity campaigns an increasingly important counterweight to product-led communications. Against this backdrop, Hyundai's decision to invest in a high-profile public interest narrative co-authored with the UNDP served a dual strategic purpose: it differentiated the brand from competitors such as Kia and Toyota, both of which were also amplifying sustainability messaging during this period, while reinforcing Hyundai's long-standing use of premium talent and image advertising to reshape global perceptions, a strategy the brand had pursued since at least the mid-1990s, as documented by mediapost.com.
The choice to feature Jessica Alba as narrator and BTS as cultural anchors reflected a precise understanding of international audience reach alongside South Korean cultural pride. BTS carried exceptional symbolic weight in 2021 as global ambassadors of Korean soft power, lending the campaign immediate credibility across markets well beyond South Korea. The UNDP partnership added institutional authority. Together, these elements constructed a strategic alliance between automotive aspiration, celebrity reach, and multilateral development credibility that few competitors in the automotive category had attempted at comparable scale. The campaign was also timed to the Earth Day moment in April and May 2021, aligning Hyundai's narrative with a globally recognised environmental occasion that amplified organic media attention for what would later be recognised among highlighted Earth Day advertising efforts of that year.
Sid Lee created Taking Steps as a documentary short film, a deliberate departure from the conventions of automotive advertising. The film eschews product footage and performance claims in favour of observational storytelling rooted in three geographic locations: Nepal, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom. Each innovator's story is treated as a self-contained human portrait, building toward a cumulative argument that individual determination at the community level can address environmental and social crises of global scale.
Jean-François Légaré served as Editorial Creative Director at Sid Lee for the for Tomorrow project, according to sidlee.com, providing creative leadership that guided the film's tonal restraint and structural discipline. The production approach prioritises authenticity: the innovators are not actors rehearsing scripted lines but practitioners captured in environments where their work actually takes place. This commitment to documentary realism required a production sensibility closer to journalism than to commercial filmmaking, a choice that directly supports the campaign's credibility strategy.
The narration by Jessica Alba functions as an editorial thread rather than a promotional voice, connecting the three stories without imposing a corporate perspective on the innovators' own accounts. The presence of BTS within the campaign framework extended its cultural footprint well beyond the documentary format alone, creating a crossover moment between purpose-driven content and mainstream entertainment culture that is relatively rare in the automotive category. Sid Lee and The Nation of Artists later served as production partners on the broader for Tomorrow documentary, as noted by sidlee.com, indicating that the creative relationship established through Taking Steps generated an ongoing production collaboration. The film was published on YouTube on May 5, 2021, under the title for Tomorrow presents: Taking Steps, according to youtube.com, and the platform became its primary distribution channel, consistent with the campaign's emphasis on accessibility and shareability.
Taking Steps generated documented performance data through its primary distribution channel. The film attracted 12,388 views, 747 likes, and 21 comments on YouTube, according to youtube.com, metrics that reflect a campaign directed at engaged sustainability audiences rather than mass reach. For a branded documentary of this type, the ratio of likes to views indicates a strongly positive reception among those who encountered the content, suggesting that the film connected meaningfully with the viewers it reached.
The UNDP announced the film's release on May 6, 2021, describing it as a presentation of solutions developed through the for Tomorrow initiative, according to undp.org, giving the campaign institutional amplification through one of the world's most recognised multilateral organisations. This UNDP endorsement extended the film's credibility beyond what paid media alone could achieve, as the organisation's own communications channels reached audiences who may never have encountered the content through conventional automotive advertising placements.
No additional verified performance data, including paid media reach, earned media coverage volume, or downstream metrics for the fortomorrow.org platform, is publicly available for this specific campaign. What the structural evidence does support is that Taking Steps operated as a foundational creative asset for a longer-running initiative rather than as a stand-alone campaign designed for peak short-term performance. Its documentary format, institutional co-authorship, and celebrity narration collectively position it as a credibility-building instrument whose value accumulates over time as the for Tomorrow platform continues to operate. The Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100 reflects this balance: strong creative and strategic construction with impact metrics that, while positive in tone, remain modest in scale relative to the campaign's evident ambitions.
Taking Steps is a 2021 short film created by Sid Lee for Hyundai Motor Company in South Korea. It documents three grassroots sustainability innovators from Nepal, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom as part of the for Tomorrow initiative co-launched with the UNDP in September 2020. The film was narrated by Jessica Alba and featured BTS.
Sid Lee created the Taking Steps campaign for Hyundai, published in South Korea in May 2021. Jean-François Légaré served as Editorial Creative Director at Sid Lee for the for Tomorrow project, according to sidlee.com. The campaign was submitted by PR Manager Kristel Dupont of Sid Lee.
Hyundai and the UNDP launched the for Tomorrow initiative on September 22, 2020, to promote grassroots solutions supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Taking Steps was released in May 2021 to mark six months since the launch, according to undp.org, and served as the initiative's primary narrative film asset.
Hyundai included Jessica Alba as narrator and BTS as cultural anchors to extend the film's reach across international markets while reinforcing South Korean cultural identity. BTS carried significant symbolic weight in 2021 as global representatives of Korean soft power, broadening the campaign's audience well beyond the automotive category's typical reach.
The Taking Steps film attracted 12,388 views, 747 likes, and 21 comments on YouTube, according to youtube.com. The strong like-to-view ratio indicates positive audience reception among the sustainability-focused viewers the campaign targeted, consistent with its documentary format and institutional UNDP co-authorship rather than mass-reach advertising objectives.
The Hyundai Taking Steps campaign received a Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100. This score reflects strong creative intent, a disciplined documentary format, and credible institutional partnerships, balanced against modest measurable reach for a campaign with clear global ambitions rooted in the South Korean automotive market.
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