Kia Motors UK’s franchised car dealer training agency Motiv8 has been awarded C&IT’s Automotive Event of the Year award for its work to introduce the new Kia Stonic to retailers via the Kia Academy.

Motiv8’s 2017 Masterclass ‘The Revolution’, which launched the Korean manufacturer’s all-new Kia Stonic to its dealer network, saw over 700 customer facing sales and service staff from the 192 strong dealer network being fully immersed in the new crossover at the facility in Nottingham.

C&IT is a B2B magazine covering the leading brands and their event strategies and judges of its annual awards hailed Motiv8 'The Revolution' as “a brilliant, exciting, challenging, surprising and motivating event” and one that “totally fulfilled all its focused objectives”.

Judges added that they were impressed with “sales results as well as the events creative and engaging concept which was different from a traditional automotive launch and created something truly memorable”.

Kia Motors said in a statement that the creative approach for the Kia Masterclass 2017 Revolution had centred on family-like care and the creation of an environment where delegates were able to absorb product knowledge and leave the event competent and confident in their knowledge of the car and the brand to assist them when selling the car.

Karen Fagan, academy executive at Kia Motors UK, who is responsible for the organisation and planning for the Kia Academy, said: “We always strive to give our dealer network an engaging and informative experience at our Masterclass events.

“For ‘The Revolution’ we needed to ensure that the training event for the cars was hard-hitting and impactful and that our network understood what impact the car had not just on our sales but on our brand image.”