Honda Cog & Grrr Adverts: Pay Attention Japanese Advertisers! Dec 23 2005
Last month, Sony Europe released their "bouncing ball" Bravia advert to a fantastic public response. I compared it with the terrible Japanese version, and it quickly became the most viewed post on my site. But there's more where that came from, as today I give you... Honda's Cog & Grrr adverts!
The Cog
In advertising circles, Honda has become quite the ground-breaker, and it all started with a cog rolling down a slope in 2003. Wieden & Kennedy's 2 minute film for Honda's Accord campaign took 606 takes, and cost £6 million, but it created a media buzz not seen before in the automotive industry. Click here to watch the advert (4.9MB, Quicktime).
Like Sony Europe's Bravia advert, Cog is a 100% CG-free piece of film-making. It's a wonderful testament to human ingenuity, creativity and perseverence, and couldn't be more different to their 2005 "Grrr" campaign...
Grrr
I've been working with Toyota over the past few months promoting their Hybid Synergy Drive via the global Information Terminal site, and we've had all sorts of ideas about how to tell the user about it's eco-friendliness. But not once did the concept of having it fly through a candy-coloured Disyney-esque landscape as rabbits and flamingos attack it's dirty predecessors cross our minds. But that's exactly what Honda did to promote their super-clean diesel engine. It couldn't be further from a typical car advert if it tried, and following Cog, it firmly placed Honda at the front of cool automotive advertsing in the UK. Click here to watch the advert (6.6MB, Mpeg).
So What About Japan?
Although Honda Japan can't seem to resist using foreign (western) models (recently having a group of jump wedding-bouquet-toss style for the keys to the car), the adverts out here in Japan aren't any worse than it's rivals. Whether it's Toyota asking you to "Drive Your Dreams" (or worse yet, being told they're "More Than Best!") it's Nissan trying to "Shift_the future" or Mazda bloody Zoom Zooming all ove the place. All adverts here seem to fit into 3 main types:
- Mr square jaw cruising down winding [mountain/beach/forest] road with covered 60's rock soundtrack
- Beautiful super mum popping down the shops with equally beautiful [friends/kids/useless boyfriend]
- Crazy adrenaline heads throwing the [kayak/mountain bike/surfboard] inside and then undressing with ease in the back.
I don't mean to get into a "Japan-bashing" frame of mind here. Japanese TV is full of wonderful adverts (which I hope to post before too long - getting hold of the links/files is quite tricky!). But there seems to be huge gaps in the approaches used by the same companies in the UK and Japan, leaving the Japanese consumer impatiently waiting to be entertained in the same (or better!) way the viewers in the UK are. Hopefully by showing "Cog" and "Grrr" to the Japanese readers of this site (who incidentally outnumber the English), expectations may rise just a little.