Agency | Wieden+Kennedy |
---|---|
Client | Honda |
Language | English |
Running time | 90 seconds |
Product | |
Release date(s) | September 24, 2004 (Cinema) October 1, 2004 (Television) |
Directed by | Adam Foulkes Alan Smith |
Music by | Michael Russoff, Sean Thompson, Richard Russell Garrison Keillor ("Can Hate Be Good?") |
Production company | Nexus Productions |
Produced by | Chris O'Reilly Charlotte Bavasso Julie Parfitt |
Country | UK |
Budget | £600,000 |
Preceded by | Everyday |
Followed by | Impossible Dream |
Official website | world |
Grrr is an 2004 advertising campaign launched by Honda to promote its newly launched i-CTDi diesel engines in the United Kingdom. The campaign, which centred on a 90-second television and cinema advert, also comprised newspaper and magazine advertisements, radio commercials, free distributed merchandise, and an internet presence which included an online game, e-mail advertising, and an interactive website. The campaign was created and managed by the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy (W+K). W+K were given a budget of £600,000 for production of the television commercial, a process which lasted six months. [1] The piece was written by Sean Thompson, Michael Russoff and Richard Russell. It was directed by Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith, produced by London-based production company Nexus Productions, and featured American author Garrison Keillor singing the campaign's theme song. Grrr premiered on British cinema screens on September 24, 2004.
Grrr was both a critical and financial success. It was the most-awarded campaign of 2005, sweeping awards ceremonies within the television and advertising industries, including the year's Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, from which it took home the Film Grand Prix—considered the most prestigious honour in the advertising industry. The campaign proved popular with the British public, and Honda reported that its brand awareness figures more than doubled in the period following the campaign's debut. Overall sales of Honda products within the UK increased by more than 35%, [2] and sales of diesel-engine Accords shot from 518 units in 2003 to 21,766 units in 2004. [3] Adweek magazine picked the ad as the overall commercial of the decade in 2009. [4]
Grrr opens with a shot of an animated landscape of grassy hills and blue lakes, with topiary bushes spelling out the word "Hate" in the background. Garrison Keillor, backed by a guitar, introduces the piece, stating "Here's a little song for anyone who's ever hated, in the key of Grrr". As Keillor launches into the main portion of the commercial's song, a noisy and primitive-looking diesel engine flies into view. The inhabitants of the cartoon world negatively react to the engine's intrusion, with flowers coughing and closing up, a frog abandoning its lily leaf and chickens squawking. Keillor's singing is joined by a group whistling the tune as a further flock of flying diesel engines join the original and continue across the landscape, gradually being picked off by a variety of cartoon animals and by the landscape itself. A brief sequence of psychedelic patterns cuts in, espousing the piece's theme of "Hate something, change something", before the view returns to the destruction of the last remaining noisy diesel engine. The second half of the commercial begins, with a double line of flamingos introducing a new, quieter, diesel engine. Accompanied by a flight of songbirds, the shining engine floats above the scenery, the cartoon creatures below celebrating its arrival. The new engine finally flies over a flower display arranged as a logo and the words "Diesel i-CTDi", before cutting to a white background emblazoned with the Honda logo and the campaign's tagline, "The Power of Dreams".
The "Power of Dreams" campaign, of which Grrr is a part, began in 2002. W+K, who pitched the concept, envisioned the "Power of Dreams" becoming a worldwide promotion tool for the Honda brand. Sales of Honda products within Europe had been in decline since 1998 under the previous campaign ("Do You Have a Honda?"), and Nissan had taken its position as the number two Japanese automotive company (behind Toyota). The concept, which built on the company's Japanese slogan, "Yume No Chikara" ("See one's dreams"), was proposed with an eye to making it "omnipresent" in the public eye. To this end, the first pieces of the campaign using the "Power of Dreams" slogan, which featured the Honda ASIMO robot, comprised appearances in television, direct mail, radio, posters, magazines, newspapers, interactive television, cinema, motor shows, dealerships, postcards, beer mats, traffic cones, and numerous other media. [3]
Following the initial burst of ASIMO-based spots, W+K released several "dream-based" campaigns for various Honda products, including Pecking Order , Seats , and Bus Lane . By far the most successful piece prior to the launch of Grrr was Cog , a 60-second television and cinema commercial for the Honda Accord, which premiered in 2003. Cog, which followed a Rube Goldberg machine constructed from pieces taken from a disassembled Accord, was a resounding success both critically and financially, garnering over 37 awards from the television and advertising industries. Between the campaign's debut and the launch of Grrr, sales of Honda automobiles within Europe increased from 170,000 to 217,000 units per year, and worldwide sales showed similar gains.
The concept behind Grrr arose from an anecdote about Honda's chief engine designer, Kenichi Nagahiro. Nagahiro detested the noise, smell, and appearance of diesel engines, and when asked to design the company's first diesel engine, he flatly refused unless he was allowed to start completely from scratch. This motivation of "positive hate" was translated into a song and an integrated campaign written by Michael Russoff, Sean Thompson and Richard Russell, a team of copywriters working for W+K. Once they'd composed the tune, a set of rough storyboards was assembled and pitched to Honda accompanied by the trio on guitars. [1] After the client greenlit the project, the team began searching for a film director. Of the applications for the position, that of Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith, an animation team known for their previous work on Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and the BBC animated sketch show Monkey Dust was approved, and the pair hired. [5] Their submission included an animation cel of a group of fish jumping out of water to swallow flying diesel engines. Michael Russoff said of the pair's submission "It was a world you wanted to see more of. It was like a golf course designed by Liberace." [1] Grrr was produced by UNIT9. [6]
Honda Motor Co., Ltd. is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan.
"Cog" is a British television and cinema advertisement launched by Honda in 2003 to promote the seventh-generation Accord line of cars. It follows the convention of a Rube Goldberg machine, utilizing a chain of colliding parts taken from a disassembled Accord. Wieden+Kennedy developed a £6 million marketing campaign around "Cog" and its partner pieces, "Sense" and "Everyday", broadcast later in the year. The piece itself was produced on a budget of £1 million by Partizan Midi-Minuit. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet directed the seven-month production, contracting The Mill to handle post-production. The 120-second final cut of "Cog" was broadcast on British television on 6 April 2003, during a commercial break in ITV's coverage of the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix.
The Honda Accord, also known as the Honda Inspire in Japan and China for certain generations, is a series of automobiles manufactured by Honda since 1976, best known for its four-door sedan variant, which has been one of the best-selling cars in the United States since 1989. The Accord nameplate has been applied to a variety of vehicles worldwide, including coupes, station wagons, hatchbacks and a Honda Crosstour crossover.
Isuzu Motors Ltd., commonly known as Isuzu, is a Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama. Its principal activity is the production, marketing and sale of Isuzu commercial vehicles and diesel engines.
The Honda Ascot is a compact sedan manufactured by Honda and marketed only in Japan from 1989 until 1997. The first generation produced two versions based on the Honda Accord CB series called the Ascot and from 1993 to 1996 a "pillared hardtop" called the Ascot Innova. The Innova shared much of its mechanicals with the European-market Accord manufactured at the Honda UK facility in Swindon, England, and was essentially the badge engineered Rover 600. The second generation was a platform improvement, shared with the Japan-only sedan called the Honda Rafaga. The "Ascot" name was chosen with reference to the Ascot Racecourse and Ascot tie, in order to add the model an alleged air of class and elegance. Honda Ascot was also used on a range of one-cylinder motorcycles in the first half of the 1980s.
Wieden+Kennedy is an American independent global advertising agency best known for its work for Nike. Founded by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it is one of the largest independently owned advertising agencies in the world.
Nexus Studios is an animation, film and interactive studio based in London and LA. It was founded in 2000 by Charlotte Bavasso and Christopher O'Reilly.
The Hollywood Film Chorale Sound Effects Choir, also popularly known as the Honda Choir, is an ensemble that can physically produce human sound effects without electronic means. They are well known for two performances in an advertisement for Honda, and at the Academy Awards. It is conducted by Steve Sidwell, who is also the composer of their repertoire. The advert for Honda followed the advert from April 2003, “Cog”, which showcased the Honda Accord.
Honda's Impossible Dream is a panoramic 2-minute-long television commercial that was launched on 2 December 2005 in the United Kingdom. It anchored the "Power of Dreams" campaign which also included a website with extensive information about the series of vintage Honda vehicles that were chosen to illustrate the dreams of the founder of Honda. It was written by Sean Thompson and Chris Groom and Creative Directed by Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth. It features an actor singing, riding and driving across the scenic shorelines and roads of New Zealand, Twin Ring Motegi in Japan, and the Iguazu Falls in South America.
Dreamer is an integrated advertising campaign launched by Diageo in 2001 to promote Guinness-brand draught stout in the United Kingdom. It is the fourth piece of the Good things come to those who wait campaign, following on from Swimblack, Surfer, and Bet on Black. As with the previous pieces of the campaign, Dreamer was handled by advertising agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and comprised appearances in print, posters, and television and cinema spots. The centrepiece of the campaign was the sixty-second television and cinema commercial directed by Jonathan Glazer, who had also directed two of the three previous ads. Post-production work was completed by The Computer Film Company which animated the squirrel sequence. The piece was premiered on SKY television on 6 April 2001, appearing on terrestrial television channels the following day.
Pretty is a television advertisement launched in 2006 by Nike, Inc. to promote its "Nike Women" brand of sportswear. The 60-second spot was handled by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, Oregon. The advert stars Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova in her first appearance as a spokesperson for the brand. Pretty debuted on U.S. television on August 20, 2006, with later appearances in cinemas and in print advertisements. It was directed by Czech director Ivan Zachariáš, with post-production and VFX work by The Mill.
Honda Advanced Technology is part of Honda's long-standing research and development program focused on building new models for their automotive products and automotive-related technologies, with many of the advances pertaining to engine technology. Honda's research has led to practical solutions ranging from fuel-efficient vehicles and engines, to more sophisticated applications such as the humanoid robot, ASIMO, and the Honda HA-420 Honda-jet, a six-passenger business jet.
Mountain is a 2003 television and cinema advertisement launched by Sony Corporation to promote the PlayStation 2 video game console. The budget for production and advertising space purchases for the 60-second piece amounted to £5m across all markets. The commercial depicts a Brazilian crowd congregating to form a mountain of human bodies, all competing to reach the top of the pile. The campaign surrounding Mountain was handled by advertising agency TBWA London. The commercial was directed by Frank Budgen. Production was contracted to Gorgeous Enterprises, with post-production by The Mill. Mountain premiered in 30 countries on 13 November 2003.
Cake is a television and cinema advertisement launched in 2007 by Škoda Auto to promote the new second-generation Fabia supermini car in the United Kingdom. The 60-second spot forms the centrepiece of an integrated advertising campaign comprising appearances on television, in cinemas, in newspapers and magazines, online, and through direct marketing. The campaign and its component parts were handled by the London branch of advertising agency Fallon Worldwide. Cake was directed by British director Chris Palmer. Production was contracted to Gorgeous Enterprises, with sound handled by Wave Studios. It premiered on British television on 17 May 2007.
Lamp is a television and cinema advertisement released in September 2002 to promote the IKEA chain of furniture stores in the United States. The 60-second commercial was the first part of the "Unböring" campaign conceived by advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and follows a lamp abandoned by its owner. It was produced by the production company Morton/Jankel/Zander, and was directed by Spike Jonze. Post-production and editing was handled by Spot Welders and sound design by the California-based MIT Out Sound. The commercial aired concurrently with another IKEA piece in the same vein, titled Moo Cow. Lamp, and its associated campaign, was a popular, critical, and financial success. Sales of IKEA furniture increased by eight percent during the period in which the commercial ran, and Lamp received a number of awards, including a Grand Clio and the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, considered the most prestigious accolade granted by the advertising community.
Tag is a television and cinema advertisement launched by Nike Inc. in 2001 to promote its line of sportswear in the United States. It was one of four pieces forming the television component of the $25m "Play" campaign, which had been running for several months. Tag was created by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. Production was handled by production company Gorgeous Enterprises, who assigned director Frank Budgen to oversee the project. Filming took place in Toronto, Ontario.
The Honda Odyssey is a minivan manufactured by Japanese automaker Honda since 1994, marketed in most of the world and currently in its fifth generation.
The ninth generation Accord is a mid-size car introduced by Honda in 2012 which received a refreshed front fascia, grill, headlights, tail lights and alloy wheel designs for the 2016 model year. With the discontinuation of the smaller European and Japanese market Accord in 2015, the larger North American Accord became the only version in production, with the Hybrid version taking over as the flagship of Honda's automotive product in many markets that once received the smaller Accord.
The fifth-generation Honda CR-V is a compact crossover SUV manufactured by Honda since 2016, replacing the fourth-generation CR-V. It was first unveiled on 13 October 2016 in Detroit, United States. Honda began producing the CR-V at East Liberty, Ohio at the East Liberty Auto Plant in November 2016 and at Greensburg, Indiana at the Honda Manufacturing of Indiana plant during February 2017. The fifth-generation of CR-V is available in 5-seater and 7-seater variant in markets other than North America.