Here we go again with another very international (and diverse) company that is running ads in the U.S. market, targeting buyers of their U.S.-market cars. When promoting a website, what do you do?

Today, we’re looking at Hyundai, which ran this ad in a July 2013 magazine (one of the newer magazines I had – most subscriptions ended around 2007 or 2008):

Now, I’m guessing that this cute family just attended a Ren Faire, unless they generally take the kids to school wearing 16th-century attire. Hey, man. You live your life the way you want!

What does that have to do with the Hyundai Santa Fe, a car named for a town in New Mexico? Maybe it’s a nod to the fact Santa Fe (the town) was founded in 1610? Maybe there was some broadcast marking effort that tied into this? Whatevs, Hyundai. I don’t get it.

The text at the bottom doesn’t give us any real clues, either. But, it does direct us to Hyundai.com for more information.

Now, I’m shining a spotlight on this website today because Hyundai.com is not the company’s main website in advertising in the U.S. market. That’s the job of hyundaiusa.com.

Typically when we see a site like this (the overarching company name), the site tends to focus on the company’s diverse or global product lineup. We saw this recently with Honda and several weeks ago with Jaguar and Land Rover.

Today, it’s Hyundai. One could reasonably expect that Hyundai.com has information about all of Hyundai’s operations, including local car manufacturing and giant shipping operations.

So what do we get?

Personally, I find this very interesting. Hyundai.com takes us to hyundaiusa.com/us/en. This isn’t a bad thing at all. Quite the contrary – I think it’s great that Hyundai is pointing the old URL to a valid site with fresh content.

I just find it interesting that they’re not pointing to the bigger, global Hyundai brand. I suppose it’s possible there’s some local geotargeting that’s sending my browser (in the United States) to a U.S. Hyundai page? Either way, I’m glad to see the ad from a time long ago still holds up.