Tuesday, November 04, 2014

The Other Side of Honda


In 2005 the German agency Nordpol won a Gold 'Direct' Lion award at Cannes for a campaign called Channel Hopper that involved two TV ads that were shown simultaneously on two different TV channels, SAT.1 and ProSeiben, at the same time:


"The Grand Prix was taken by German agency Nordpol Hamburg for its internet and TV campaign for the launch of the Renault Modus.

Answering the brief to sell the car's "young at heart" proposition, the agency ran a internet teaser campaign and email to Renault prospects to tell them to when to watch a mystery TV ad, without telling them what product it was for.

The ad was special in that slightly different versions of it were broadcast simultaneously on two different TV channels. The audience was asked to channel hop between the two ads to get the full impact. They were then directed to see the ad's ending on the Modus website and encouraged to register for a test drive.

The judges applauded the campaign for signposting the future of direct marketing."


You can see the case study here (sadly not embeddable)

I have to say that I saw it in 2005, and I've seen it again now, and I'm still baffled as to how it could have been signed off, let alone won any awards (the car does not appear at all).  It seems like a clever media stunt that's looking for a brand to endorse it.

However Honda has just released a new film, The Other Side of Honda, that does something very similar, but much more effectively using YouTube and letting people switch between versions of the film by pressing the R key (the car is the Civic Type R) on their keyboard.  See the trailer below:



See the full interactive version here

The films show two stories with the same actor - one a light family story, the other a much darker thriller.

It's amazingly well done.  Both silent films are engaging in their own right, and being able to switch from one to the other makes it infinitely more engaging.  

You can't see views on this video (you can't embed it either), but I bet it's doing very well!





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