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Planning-wise, I can't think of a more imaginative point of entry into 'fortress automobile' than this in recent years. As for execution, it is a joy to be tickled and amused by a car proposition, rather than mown down in a charge of adrenaline, or drowned in a tide of aspiration. This Kia ad deserves applause.

It goes without saying that this campaign enjoys some of the luxuries afforded only to small-share players, but when is the last time you remembered a car commercial because you couldn't free your mind of hordes of Viking reindeer (my interpretation), who go chasing and squeaking after the Kia Sportage as it taunts them with its four-wheel drive? And all of this in a world so unlike the native landscape of the SUV that you suspend whatever prejudice you may have had against kangaroo-killing, gas-guzzling hybrids.

The Kia strategy seems to be to enter lots of segments, winning modest share in each with a 'why have that when you can have this?' argument. Intriguingly, it has chosen as its competitors other less appealing segments in the same price bracket, rather than like-for-like alternatives. 'For £14,500, why have a hatchback when you could have one of these?'

This creates a better story for Kia than it might, were other SUVs the benchmark, and it gives it a great leaping-off point for the advertising, the principal duty of which is to open such an unlikely window in your mind that you begin to agree that there is a better way of looking at £14,500.

A Kia Sportage may not be best in its class, I don't know. But the take-out is that it is a hell of a lot smarter than the squeaky hordes who can't quite keep up. What's more, compared with the Viking reindeer and their strikingly low driving position, sheep-like sense of direction and doomed-to-fail acceleration, the whole impression is suitably nippy and high off the ground. I'm no petrolhead - in fact I'm scarcely a lead-free amateur - but I am guessing that these are good things to communicate.