Make stuff people want to watch
There's been lots of talk, and more importantly demonstration, lately of people really treating TV ads more like the entertainment/bits of popular culture they need to be. Fallon probably were one of the first agencies to grasp this with the 'making of' blogs surrounding the Sony Bravia ads and the infamous Cadbury work but there was another great example of this in the UK last week from the good people at Wieden.
They have been turning out great, un-category like (ie good and interesting) work for some time for Honda but their new campaign - based again on a piece of Achiro Honda philosophy, that 'difficult is worth doing' - upped the ante again. They ran a live ad on Channel 4 of skydivers spelling the word Honda. This was 'trailered' online with a making of blog that garnered a load of press coverage. The end result - loads of press column inches, but interestingly a huge impact on viewership. The spot drew an average of 2.2MM people (very good for Channel 4), but more interestingly viewership grew by another 8% (or around 170,000 people) by the end of the three minute ad. And this provided the 'launch' for the ongoing campaign where the TV is essentially a smarter, more nuanced version of the same idea and gets across the whole Honda notion of human engineering'.
Proof I think that a) if you make interesting stuff people will actively choose to watch it and b) brands need to think of their communication as another product - if you make it good, people will want to consume it. Now it feels that there is no excuse not to make fresh, good, interesting, unformulaic advertising. The risktakers, those who believe in the spectacular, those who place lots of small bets, will be the brands whose communications will help them thrive in an era of on demand media consumption and communications overload.
i love this evolution of commercials!
Posted by: west bremerton flowers | June 02, 2008 at 01:59 AM
Hi Gareth,
I can confirm that the whole process has been difficult, but hopefully worth doing.
Posted by: Paul H. Colman | June 02, 2008 at 03:25 AM
From the credits and word of mouth the live sky diving ad wasn't done by W&K - apparently it was 4Creative.
The overall thought 'difficult is worth doing' is W&K though.
Posted by: Rob | June 02, 2008 at 09:45 AM
paul - lovely to hear from you. how are you? keeping chipper i trust.
rob - i think from what i have heard is 4creative /channel 4 approached wieden with an idea for a 3 minute ad and 4creative came up with the live execution of skydivers spelling honda when the skydiving idea was shared by wieden. anyway, a moot point. the good thing i think is this is a great case in collaboration between partners, a really important thing today.
Posted by: gareth | June 02, 2008 at 08:58 PM
I think that part of what can make something like this successful is goodwill built up from good past work, which Honda has loads of in the UK.
Kind of a different take on the idea of advertising being a marathon, not a sprint. The more good stuff you do, the more people are likely to give your new stuff a chance.
Posted by: Kevin | June 03, 2008 at 06:41 PM
couldn't agree more-I meant to weave that important point in. Thanks.
Posted by: gareth | June 04, 2008 at 04:32 AM
Am i the only one who thought Honda's campaign showed why live advertising will probably never be more than a silly one off media-first. At least, that 'first' was had, relatively inoffensively, so perhaps we've got it out of our collective system already.
Posted by: Dominic | June 17, 2008 at 09:30 AM