- Total spend on advertising cars has eased in recent years, but the sector remains a significant spender.
- TV accounts for nearly half of sector adspend; outdoor is growing, while the internet is emerging as a significant communications channel.
- TGI data suggest that consumers consider brand image and advertising to be of minimal importance when buying a car – but the likelihood is that marketing gets them thinking about a specific brand, then other, more rational and practical decisions take precedence.
Honda
Besides making cars, Japan’s Honda (http://www.honda.com/) is also the largest manufacturer of motorbikes in the world. It also develops a broad range of other products including small general-purpose engines, speedboats, scooters and speciality sports cars.
Honda’s most successful cars in the UK in 2007 were the Civic, fifth in the lower medium segment, and the Honda CVR, which leads the dual-purpose 4x4s/SUVs segment.
The company launched its Insight hybrid at the Paris Motor Show in October 2008. The vehicle, which reportedly will sell for approximately £12,000, or about a third less than the Toyota Prius, may be the one that enables hybrids to make a real breakthrough into the mainstream.
In terms of advertising, Honda supports specific models but also produces TV adverts on an epic scale to reinforce the Honda brand, including ‘The Impossible Dream’, which followed a series of historical Honda-made forms of transport to the soundtrack of the Andy Williams song of the same name, to the more recent series of four teaser adverts, the final one featuring a team of skydivers who, after several attempts, come together to form the red initial letter ‘H’ that is Honda’s logo under the strapline, ‘Impossible is worth doing’.
Key analysis: So while consumers may not actually be swayed in making their decision due to a specific advert, car advertising often plays a more subliminal role in reinforcing a brand’s credentials, and steering potential purchasers towards a specific brand or model – on one hand, the key features such as price and reliability become the factors that will decide whether or not the vehicle is purchased. On the other hand, the advertising also a way for brand style and brand attitude presentation.
Wieden & Kennedy’s Honda ‘Choir’ spot, with its clear audio focus to represent engine quietness, would be an obvious contender for transfer.
Honda have launched a campaign for its Civic hatchback model through Wieden & Kennedy television adverts in 2006. The strapline “This is what a Honda feels like” which showed a car driving around a multi-storey carpark with choir music used to mimic the sound of the vehicle.
Honda W+K’s captivating new spot puts the brand’s 65-year history in a single engineer’s hands.
The spot is called “Hands,” which makes plenty of sense, and it’s also one of those great, semi-wordless pieces that plays well no matter what language you speak. Transforming motorcycles are wonderful in every country. As are transforming pieces of building hardware.
The two-minute spot celebrates the curious spirit that has made Honda the largest engine manufacturer and racing company in the world since its founding in 1948. And there are certainly many Honda products on display—heritage products like the 2RC143 bike; current products like the 2013 Honda TT Legends Fireblade, the HB25 leafblower, the CR-V and the Honwave T38 inflatable boat; innovative Honda technologieslike the 2015 NSX concept, the FCX Clarity car, which emits nothing but water, and of course ASIMO; as well as Honda’s first production NSX from 1990, the road sports car Honda developed in collaboration with Ayrton Senna.
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-honda-151004
HuangZhen 