Hasta La Creative!

Serious commercials are hard to do well, but when you’re doing content specifically for TNT’s upcoming Sean Bean spy thriller, Legends, it’s sort of mandatory.

So Hyundai and TNT turned to New Form, the ad shop run by movie idea guys Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, to create an energetic three-part story that will air over a combined total of 11 minutes during the limited commercial slots of Wednesday’s Legends pilot.

TNT has pulled out all the marketing stops for the launch of Legends, and several of its ideas have been rather clever. (Given its star’s career history, my favorite is the #dontkillseanbean hashtag game on Twitter). Hyundai’s long-form ad, however, is certainly the flashiest.

In the three-part short film, a man chases down the shadowy corporation that’s kidnapped his girl, and while the new Hyundai Genesis sedan plays a major part in the show, viewers won’t feel overly bombarded by brand messaging.

The video is part of a larger partnership around the series for Hyundai, too. Not only will the automaker sponsor the show on air, but it will also have category exclusivity and will sponsor digital versions of the show, too.

More broadly, the digital presentation is a nice perk for cable subscribers, who will be able to get the show’s premiere episode a week before it debutes via TNT’s on-demand service or the WatchTNT app. The episode will also play on TNTDrama.com, though it requires subscriber verification (as does most everything these days).