A Classic Honda Ad. But Was It Worth the Money? Did It Actually Sell Cars?
I probably should not do this. I'm going to give you a Web link to click. You really should click it. But then you will stop reading this report, at least temporarily, something that authors are not supposed to encourage. Still, I can't resist. You'll soon see why.
After you click the link, please read this report before the document downloads. If you don't have DSL or cable, you will have plenty of time to read this issue before the entire document downloads. It's a 2-minute movie. And what a movie! You may already have seen it. If so, you cannot forget it. It's Honda's "Rube Goldberg- san" ad.
Warning: don't watch it as it downloads. When it downloads, it goes in spurts, with lots of frozen screen time. You will miss the overall effect. You need to see it straight through. Get it downloaded before you watch it. Don't worry; it keeps repeating.
This ad has already become a classic, just like the other great Internet ad of the guy fighting the bear for the fish. (Problem: I cannot recall the name of the frozen fish company that sponsored that ad.) The Honda ad took longer to create. The story is, the film crew had to shoot it 606 times to get a final copy. For 505 times, something went wrong in the sequence of events.
The film's action is a series of toppling auto parts, with each falling part triggering the next fall. Except for two beams of wood and some motor oil, everything that moves is a Honda part.
The end result is where the sale is made . . . maybe.
Honda ran the ad on British TV in 2003. It runs for just short of two minutes. That is a long, expensive time for any ad. It is costing a fortune to pay for the air time. On the other hand, nobody paid a dime to get you to view it, and you are probably going to view it -- more than once.
The ad's sales pitch is seven words long. It makes its point. See if you recognize the narrator. It probably cost Honda more to hire that narrator to speak those seven words than you will earn this year . . . and was well worth it. This comes only in the final ten seconds. Yet tens of millions of people will hear those words more than once, including you, if your computer has speakers.
I say that the narrator was worth the money, yet this has been an unexpected benefit. I suspect that the British audience will not recognize the voice. Millions of Americans who view the ad on their computers will either identify it or think, "Who is that? I recognize that voice." I should think so! Again, the ad gets into people's minds and stays there.
Underneath the ad's on-screen image there is lots of written information about the ad itself, including links to reports on it. The ad has attracted enormous attention. As soon as you view it, you'll understand why.
BUT WILL IT SELL CARS?
This ad may be the best example of an image ad in the last ten years. I say this because it's all over the Internet. This is the best example of word-of-mouse advertising I have ever seen.
But is it a good ad? It's unquestionably a memorable visual experience, but will it lead to shoppers walking into a showroom? The sales pitch -- the seven words -- asks a question. It's the unstated implication of the answer that is the heart of the ad.
I won't tell you what this seven-word phrase is. You must view the ad from the beginning, when the first cog starts rolling, and then hear the punch-line phrase, in order to assess its selling power. You decide whether it sells the product. I suggest that you not turn on the sound or put on your earphones until the ad begins. Don't listen to the sound track until the first little cog starts rolling down the piece of wood (which looks a little bit like a scene of a lake for about one second). This will begin immediately following the screen shot of Honda's name and slogan -- not the audible sales question.
If you own a small business or you are designing an ad to help you increase sales if you're a salesman -- and everyone in business is a salesman -- you cannot afford an image ad. Even if your film crew doesn't have to shoot 606 takes, you still cannot afford an image ad. Honda can, or so the company's senior executives tell themselves. But you can't.
If it had been my decision, I would have vetoed the project on day one. The ad has no "big point" to make. There is nothing that says to the viewer, "Act now!" Any ad that does not say, loud and clear, "Act now!" is an ad that you cannot afford. Very few companies can. Yet they keep buying image ads.
I offer a challenge to you. Watch the ad a couple of times. See if there is anything in it that you would choose to demonstrate on TV if you had, say, 30 seconds to make your sales pitch.
To sell something, you must persuade the consumer that it is worth his money to buy your item. The only way to do this is to persuade him that the benefits of owning or using what you're selling are worth more to him than what the money will buy. This is no easy thing to do.
The hardest sale of all is when you are trying to get a new job, and you must persuade a prospective employer that the benefits that you will produce as an employee will be worth more -- way more -- than what it will cost him to hire you.
This is why the typical career vita doesn't get to the top of anyone's pile. It's a list accomplishments, each described in a few words. It's a survey of your past. What you need to create is a presentation of what you can do in the future for the employer, with your vita as supplemental evidence that you have done similar things in the past. Don't expect the reader to extrapolate from a brief summary of your past to his future. He is simply not interested in your past except insofar as it might verify your value in his future.
That's the problem with the Honda ad. I see parts falling like dominos, but where is the compelling benefit that would lead me to take a specific action, which would lead to another specific action, which would lead to a sale of a Honda? Watch it. See if you can spot it.
If you can't, then it was not a good ad, despite its being clever.
Clever doesn't sell.
WELL, ALMOST NEVER
There have been a few ad campaigns that were clever that led to increased sales. Four decades ago, Volkswagen's "Think Small" magazine display ads, which included my favorite, "Relieves Gas Pains." The ads promoted what in those days was perceived as a liability -- small cars -- by means of a specific benefit: gasoline mileage. But, instead of proving this statistically, the ad designers figured the claim needed no proof. The reader would not fight the ad's assumption: smaller car, better mileage.
Another clever ad slogan that worked was Wendy's 1984 "Where's the Beef?" campaign, where a little old lady (Clara Peller) keeps asking -- of rival hamburger restaurants -- "Where's the beef?" Then the TV screen showed large beef patties on a Wendy's hamburger. Wendy's share up the market rose by a staggering 31%, with profits up 24%.
But for every campaign that uses a clever slogan or a play on words -- "relieves gas pains" -- there are tens of thousands that produce no measurable results. If an ad campaign's results cannot be measured accurately enough to enable the company's senior executives to determine whether an ad campaign is bringing in more money than it is costing, then they should not commission the ad. The first question to any ad agency, including an in-house agency, should be this one: "How will we be able to measure the results of the campaign?"
An ad that doesn't have a way to measure this is an image ad. You can't afford one.
But coupon ads, which let businesses measure results, never win creative ad awards in the ad industry's equivalents of the Academy Awards. Ad industry professionals want to win awards for creative design a lot more than they want their clients to make money.
CONCLUSION
Honda's Rube Goldberg-san ad is a viewer-pleasing ad. It's fun to watch. It's fun to forward to buddies. But, as a non-buyer of new cars, I would not buy a new Honda based on this ad. I drove my 1987 Honda for 110,000 miles in addition to the 60,000 that were on it when I bought it, to the point that my wife won't ride in it because of the dust that its failing seals have let in.
Then I gave it to my next-door neighbor. He added a replacement clutch, added a can of $12 air conditioner anti-leak liquid, and now has a fully functional car.
I want benefits. Honda in its ad offers an implied benefit. In response to this implied benefit, I will spend implied money. But Honda spent real money to create the ad.
The ad was very good for me. I got this article out of it. But Honda is not in business to give way free ideas.
I'm not saying that the ad won't sell cars. With Internet forwarding, it may sell a few. But nobody at the ad agency guessed that this free word-of-mouse advertising would make this ad a classic. It was a high-risk ad.
I prefer lower risks and high rates of response.
Note: the voice-over was made by Garrison Keillor, of "Lake Wobegon" fame. But is he known in Great Britain? Doubtful.
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