Innovative car ad gets raves

You know something’s hot when it gets a lot of gab on the Worldwide Web. Jenna Jameson and Jenny McCarthy pics aside, the Web’s sundry discussion boards and blogs are veritable pop culture wind vanes, pointing stuff that’s hot or not. So when a car ad gets its fair share of Web talk, then it must be something to catch.

Honda UK’s TV spot for its Accord Tourer wagon has been generating a stream of yakking from netizens for some time now. First aired a few months back, the interest continues in this refreshing take on auto advertising.

While most car ads are defined by tightly-edited clips of good-looking folks slipping and sliding a particular vehicle — suitably accompanied by cheesy pop music — the Accord ad only shows pieces of the car most of the time, the vehicle seen only for a few seconds at the end. However, it’s still markedly different from the Infinity "Zen" ads during the marque’s launch in the late 80s — an ad campaign that’s considered a milestone in auto advertisments — where no picture of a car appeared.

The Accord ad, simply titled Cog, starts with what appears to be gears rolling into another, then dropping a few inches to the floor hitting a camshaft that rotates to hit an exhaust assembly, which in turn also rotates hitting a few pieces of valves atop a hood...it goes on, man. To windshield washers spraying water, wipers mopping, bearings turning dashboard lights on, wheels moving, glass windows swiveling, power windows opening, coil springs dropping to the floor, wheels moving and finally ending with the Accord rolling off its platform. Shot like an indie European film in a loft-like setting, Cog is highly amusing.

The message of the TV spot, meanwhile, is clearly delivered by its copy. The sequence of movements where one component hits one after another in perfect symphony is punctuated by the line "Isn’t it great when things just work?"

Ironically, the filming of the ad nearly didn’t work. Which also brings forth another aspect of the ad that’s truly notable; its filmmaking merits. You see the Cog makers didn’t make use of any computer wizardry, which would have made the entire exercise a lot easier. Nor were there any cuts in this two-minute clip. All the rolling gizmos and swiveling what-have-yous are exactly how it happened in "real life", and shot in one continous take. Talk about cinema verité.

To achieve this feat, a staggering amount of work went into the Cog’s production. Reportedly, a crew of eight spent six months building the set and perfecting the sequence. Then the whole thing was performed over 600 times in front of the camera, where it perfectly worked only 60 times.

Technical difficulties and gee-whiz gazillion shoots aside, Cog is expected to clinch a Clio — the advertising world’s equivalent of the Oscar — for its creator, the London-based agency Weiden and Kennedy. This group is also responsible for another Honda ad where kids built a Civic out of toys.

Honda UK corporate communication say they wanted something different from a car going down the road. And that was exactly what it got. But what is truly refreshing is that for a company that pitches high-tech goodies, it showed it can do some things the old-fashioned way. And make it work.

(To check out the ad, log on to www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/honda.php or look for it at your favorite search engines. There are a lot of links to this ad out there.)