Kia Motors Leverages thisMoment's Distributed Engagement Channel to Create Official Interactive Experience for Kia Soul

SAN FRANCISCO, June 21 /PRNewswire/ -- thisMoment, a company focused on creating engaging experiences at the point where social media, mobile devices, and the real-time Web collide, today announced that Kia Motors America (KMA) is leveraging its Distributed Engagement Channel (DEC) to create an official interactive experience for the Kia Soul urban passenger vehicle.

The new channel, which connects fans across Facebook and YouTube, will aggregate social conversations around the Kia Soul in one central location, as well as feature videos and photos of the new vehicle. And for the first time ever, fans will be able to access and participate in a YouTube contest on Facebook, which launches on July 2, 2010. To view the Kia Soul channel on Facebook, visit: http://bit.ly/coe4us and on YouTube, visit: www.youtube.com/kiasoul.

"The Kia Soul is a game-changer for the Kia brand and appeals to youthful audiences with its energetic personality and variety of personalization options," said Michael Sprague, vice president, marketing of KMA. "Soul continues to be popular in the social media space as well, with a significant number of Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers, so thisMoment's platform allows us to leverage this passionate community into creating a completely new interactive experience online."

"By extending a YouTube contest to Facebook for the first time through our platform, Kia Motors is truly building one connected community around its brand," said Vince Broady, CEO and co-founder of thisMoment. "As the first automotive company to leverage thisMoment's platform, Kia Motors is offering its fans a new way to express themselves and engage with other fans online."

thisMoment's Distributed Engagement Channel (DEC) enables a single interactive brand channel to be distributed in its entirety to multiple social environments, including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, the brand site and the iPhone.  The DEC, which is fully customizable, features a seamless real-time connection between all environments in which it is deployed and allows brands to leverage one, simple CMS to publish and manage content.  User-generated submissions can be uploaded directly to the channel or pulled from a user's existing social media library, and can be moderated by the brand before or after posting.  The DEC also features robust programming capabilities and social activity reporting (e.g. uploads, shares, comments, streams, etc.) either by the specific environment or in aggregate. A customized version of the Distributed Engagement Channel is now available to Google advertisers as an upgrade to YouTube brand channels.

For more information about how to leverage thisMoment's Distributed Engagement Channel, brands can either contact their Google sales representative or send an email to [email protected].  For more information about thisMoment visit: http://www.thisMoment.com.

About thisMoment

thisMoment (www.thismoment.com) creates engaging experiences for brands and consumers at the point where social media, mobile devices, and the real-time Web collide. Its offerings are built on the @thisMoment platform, a real-time, distributed, social content management system. The company's flagship product is the Distributed Engagement Channel™ (DEC), which manages branded, user-generated, and Web content across multiple social environments including YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and the iPhone. thisMoment also offers a Custom Solutions program to provide turnkey interactive media solutions for brands, publishers, and agencies. For consumers, the company offers its critically-acclaimed lifestreaming service at thismoment.com/moments. Founded in April 2008, and headquartered in San Francisco, thisMoment is the latest creation of a team that over the last 15 years has designed and managed some of the Web's biggest consumer properties, including GameSpot, MP3.com, TV.com and, more recently, led the Yahoo! Entertainment portfolio (Yahoo! Movies, Music, Games, OMG!, TV and Video) and its Brand Universe initiative.

About Kia Motors

Kia Motors America (KMA) is the marketing and distribution arm of Kia Motors Corporation based in Seoul, South Korea. KMA offers a complete line of vehicles through more than 670 dealers throughout the United States. For 2009, KMA recorded its 15th consecutive year of increased U.S. market share. Kia Motors subscribes to a philosophy of building high value, high quality, safe and dynamic vehicles. Kia Motors prides itself on producing vehicles that are exciting and enabling and evoke the Kia tagline "The Power to Surprise."

Kia Motors America is the "Official Automotive Partner of the NBA." Information about Kia Motors America and its full vehicle line-up is available at its Web site – www.kia.com. For media information, including photography, visit www.kiamedia.com. 

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

SOURCE thisMoment