Product clinics conducted with target buyers revealed that an unbadged i30 ranked best in design among the car's key competitors - until people discovered it was a Hyundai.

"At the end of the process when you tell them it's a Hyundai, their preference for the car suddenly drops. It doesn't go from first to last, but it drops," Hall said.

People couldn't even articulate what caused their abrupt fall in interest since they knew too little about the brand in the first place, he added. "They have this subconscious feeling that it's probably not good, they just can't explain why."

Less than 15 percent of consumers can spontaneously name Hyundai as an automotive brand compared to the 35 percent for the average automaker - a key determinant when it eventually comes time for a car buyer to draw up a shopping list of models.

Part of the problem that Hyundai has to overcome, Hall believes, is its very origin.

"There is an emotional detachment from the brand and I think that is driven a lot by Korea's geography as an Asian country thousands of miles away. Very few people choose to go to Korea for holidays, for example," said Hall.

He wants to emulate the success of Samsung and LG, two South Korean brands that emerged from behind the shadows of Japanese giants Sony and Panasonic to shake up the consumer electronics market.

So as not to dilute the message, Hyundai will invest over two-thirds of its budget around television and digital campaigns focused on the i30 compact and its ix35 SUV cousin.

"Whereas our share of Europe's auto industry advertising traditionally was in line with our share of the European car market - in other words currently around 3.5 percent - we now want to bump that up to as much as 7 percent," Rushforth said.

With Europe's carmakers spending about 8.96 billion euros for ads last year, according to data from market researcher Nielsen, this would translates to a total ad budget of close to 630 million euros.