Bob Mackin
British Columbia is a major movie and TV production centre.
Hyundai ad shot at the Westin Bayshore (Hyundai)
It is also one of the hottest locations for automobile ads.
But even nature and the built environment aren’t ideal for some directors.
One of the city’s biggest downtown hotels was dressed-up as a hospital for a Hyundai ad airing on CBC and Sportsnet Stanley Cup playoff broadcasts.
A city skyline was added to the closing scene of a Kia ad that ran last year.
Similarly, a city skyline was added to a scene from a Lincoln ad.
Lincoln ad shot in Campbell River, where there really are no towers (Lincoln)
The 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe “It’s Go Time” ad features a husband rushing his in-labour wife and her mother through Vancouver streets to a hospital maternity ward. Except the ad doesn’t end at a hospital, but the Westin Bayshore.
The waterfront hotel has been dressed-up before, in 2009 as the Lotus Casino, for Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. The film was released the same day the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics opened. Coincidentally, the Bayshore was the official International Olympic Committee hotel during the Games. Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes put the Bayshore on the map in 1972 when he rented the top four floors and stayed in the three-room penthouse suite for six months.
The 2018 Lincoln Pickup and Delivery: The Rower ad’s last scene is nearby, outside the Vancouver Rowing Club in Stanley Park. Look closely around the 10-second mark and you’ll spot a city skyline in the distance, behind U.S. Olympic rower Meghan O’Leary.
Kia ad shot near Horseshoe Bay. (Kia)
“We placed a skyline in the background of the Campbell River shots (the images in question) to make the travel passage feel shorter and connecting the two areas – her rowing in a picturesque backdrop and the site where the keys are exchanged,” said Lincoln spokeswoman Amanda Park.
In the 2019 Kia Sorrento Natural Habitat ad, at the 53-second mark of the 60-second cut, the vehicle is driven south on the Sea-to-Sky Highway near Horseshoe Bay. A city skyline appears in the southwest, beyond Horseshoe Bay.
Kia’s corporate communications manager Mark James said that “the shoot locations were chosen to fit within creative concept visuals. On occasion, we use public venues and if the visuals do not entirely match the creative concept we may in some circumstances modify elements to align to the creative concept.”
- WATCH highlights of the three auto ads below.
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