Kia's funky little Soul is more than just a mini-MPV. Dubbed an "urban passenger vehicle". This fun little transportation device is aiming for the young (or young at heart), city dweller who wants more than "just a way to get around".

Introduced at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, the Kia Soul comes standard with a radio mounted USB jack, presumably a must-have for the active urbanite. Add-on's include racing stripes, an interior light package, and LED turn-signals.

But, perhaps the most innovative feature of the new Soul, has nothing to do with the car. It's the marketing.

For its 2009 US launch, Kia utilised a troop of™hamsters to "hip-hop" their way onto the pop-culture scene.

The furry spokesmen proved so popular, that a slew of online games, and Facebook Apps soon followed. This use of "social marketing" helped Kia to sell twice as many Souls in the US, as its similarly styled (and priced) competitor, the Nissan Cube.

Hoping that history will repeat itself, Kia has teamed with thisMoment, a company that specializes in "creating engaging experiences at the point where social media, mobile devices, and the real-time Web collide".

Together, they've created something called, a Distributed Engagement Channel (DEC), which pulls in content from multiple social networks, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Flickr.

Users can upload their own content, and have conversations across multiple social networks, from one central page.

This marks the first time that social media giants like Facebook and YouTube have "shared" anything.

And all it took was a hamster driving a Kia.