Honda Skydiving Commercial

Honda, like many advertisers, uses a live television spot in a regular program to overcome the growing consumer practice of fast forwarding through commercials.

Honda must have set a series of records with its live skydiving commercial. Who else has risked the time, money, talent and safety to send two planes and 19 skydivers 14,000 feet into the air to spell its name for a live audience in another country?

Actually, the costly and dangerous H-O-N-D-A stunt was designed to introduce the Japanese carmaker's new slogan for its 2009 Accord: "Difficult is worth doing."

Difficult is one thing. Dangerous and sky-high expensive is something else. How dangerous was it? Well, one of the planes crashed, and a skydiver was killed, the next day on a completely different job that had nothing to do with Honda.

The three-minute Honda skydiving commercial was produced by the Wieden & Kennedy agency and Britian’s Channel 4. It was shot in the sky near Madrid and shown live to an audience of about two million on London’s Channel 4. Honda will now use the scene in recorded television spots for the new Accord.

The live spot was incorporated into a Channel 4 reality show. It was one more attempt by advertisers to overcome the growing consumer practice of fast forwarding past commercials.

The skydiving commercial was also in keeping with Honda’s reputation for producing very different commercials, a reputation built on what Ian Armstrong, Honda’s manager for British communications, told the New York Times.

"Our job is to make good ads that people want to watch," he said.

References:

• Eric Pfanner, New York Times, June 6, 2008
• Honda.co.uk
• Weiden & Kennedy.com