The Power of Dreams
Must say, I like Honda’s new Power of Dreams ad. campaign.
It’s basically an inspirational epic ironically performed by a guy in a 70s biker suit singing the Impossible Dream.
It’s supposed to reflect the spirit of Honda’s visionary founder and his impossible dream to reach that unreachable star. Hmmmm, it kinda falls down at that point. However, the visuals and sound track are good.
I like the retro feel and kitsch character. It’s ironic. It has to be. That’s what makes it work. Somehow the ad. captures the imagination. The song does most the work. Good call to redo The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha.
It must have been quite something to pitch the concept. I worked on a big Japanese electronics account a while back and pitching quirky concepts wasn’t easy. The Japanese execs were a pretty conservative bunch, and chose pretty conservative concepts as a result. Hats off to the guys at Wieden & Kennedy for pulling off another memorable campaign for Honda.
Will it shift Hondas though ? At the best of times they’re pretty uninspiring boxes. People with impossible dreams don’t tend to drive Hondas. Salesmen do. Ah well, it brightens up the ad breaks.
The New ‘Berliner’ Guardian
Just love the new ‘Berliner’ Guardian. Made a point of buying it Monday morning to read on the way to work.
The smaller size is much easier to handle. Especially on a packed train. They’ve signposted content with clear navigation and put neat section headers at the bottom of the front page.
All my favourite sections are there in a new redesigned format. They’ve given G2 a nice little makeover and completely redone the Saturday Guardian. Their online version has also been updated making it easier to navigate around in.
The new font and styling is appealing and gives a fresh, energetic look and feel. The colour pictures and photo journalism is first rate.
Here’s a Flickr analysis of the front cover and here’s a creative assessment of the new format.
Strength to the new Berliner Guardian. The only question is, will the redesign translate into higher circulation ? Let’s hope so.
Phil Gould and cut and paste plagiarism….
Looks like ABC MediaWatch’s ‘cut and paste plagiarism’ accusation against Phil Gould has kicked up a bit of a storm in Oz.
It all revolves around when the line, “It reminded me of an email I received years ago, which I’ll share part of with you here
OMG ! This weblog gets on Australian TV…
Holy Dooley ! This little weblog gets a mention on Australian TV… How good is that ! Turns out the Aussie footy commentator Phil Gould has been busted swiping copy from this site ! Watch the clip here.
Apparently, he wrote a Sun-Herald column on July 24 reminiscing on the good old days growing up in Australia. Looks like some copy was blatantly lifted from a nostalgic account of an Aussie childhood on this site. Here’s the entry.
ABC TV’s Mediawatch picked up Phil’s goof and featured this site on it’s TV report. I only noticed when my visitor stats exploded with traffic from Down Under !
I didn’t write the piece, it came through on email as an amusing thing forwarded round the office on a slow afternoon. I lived and worked in Oz a few years back and contracted for a Melbourne IT firm. One day the ‘Growing up in Australia’ mail was passed around. No idea where it came from. When I started blogging, I remembered it, dug it out and posted it as an amusing childhood nostalgia fest.
I’ve no idea if Phil lifted the copy from this site or found it elsewhere ? Cool to be featured on TV though.
EPIC
By 2014 newspaper journalism is in decline and The New York Times has gone offline. A strange new force called EPIC rules the mediascape… click here to find out more.
Comments:
Exciting…
…if a little worrying. Will the future be full of massive corporations filtering what news we receive on a daily basis and showing the consumer what they want? Or is this just a sensationalist view of a future which has little basis in fact?
Dave Nash. Friday, May 27, 2005 2:01 AM
Yeah, looks like google will take over the world. Sure is sensationalist. You could imagine a similar thing 10 years ago about Microsoft software dominating everything. Bit scary really. I guess we always worry about sinister forces taking over the future. Terrible corporations feeding us on the media equivalent of junk food. Orwell gave us his grim prediction of a totalitarian future in 1984. We do have a tendency to see the future as bleak and full of demons, rather than a bright, technical age of opportunity, sustainable wealth and equality.
Wonder what google makes of the EPIC thing, strokes a few egos there I suppose. Traditional media will certainly have to rethink their business in the coming years. It’s been on the cards for a while. I remember debates in the late 90s about how print media would be wiped out by the online juggernaut. Fanciful stuff on tailored newspapers being printed in the home. Rather than buying a paper on the way to work, you would pick up your customised news sheet from the PC’s printer on the way out. Seems strangely optimistic now !
Today, magazine publishing is booming, despite the doomsayers of the digital revolution. Broadsheets and tabloids are in real circulation decline though. They’re gonna have to rethink what they do. Which is what the EPIC thing is all about I guess. One to watch.
If you know any print journalists, forward on the link…..hehehehe
David. Friday, May 27, 2005 4:01 PM
Exciting…
…if a little worrying. Will the future be full of massive corporations filtering what news we receive on a daily basis and showing the consumer what they want? Or is this just a sensationalist view of a future which has little basis in fact?
Dave Nash. Friday, May 27, 2005 2:01 AM
Yeah, looks like google will take over the world. Sure is sensationalist. You could imagine a similar thing 10 years ago about Microsoft software dominating everything. Bit scary really. I guess we always worry about sinister forces taking over the future. Terrible corporations feeding us on the media equivalent of junk food. Orwell gave us his grim prediction of a totalitarian future in 1984. We do have a tendency to see the future as bleak and full of demons, rather than a bright, technical age of opportunity, sustainable wealth and equality.
Wonder what google makes of the EPIC thing, strokes a few egos there I suppose. Traditional media will certainly have to rethink their business in the coming years. It’s been on the cards for a while. I remember debates in the late 90s about how print media would be wiped out by the online juggernaut. Fanciful stuff on tailored newspapers being printed in the home. Rather than buying a paper on the way to work, you would pick up your customised news sheet from the PC’s printer on the way out. Seems strangely optimistic now !
Today, magazine publishing is booming, despite the doomsayers of the digital revolution. Broadsheets and tabloids are in real circulation decline though. They’re gonna have to rethink what they do. Which is what the EPIC thing is all about I guess. One to watch.
If you know any print journalists, forward on the link…..hehehehe
David. Friday, May 27, 2005 4:01 PM
Jeremy Bowen: On the Front Line
Watched Jeremy Bowen: On the Front Line last night. Brilliant account of his experiences as a war correspondent. He presented a well thought out essay on the fear, excitement and personal cost of war reporting.
Bowen’s first war was El Salvador in 1989. He describes the exhilaration and terror of seeing war for the first time. He reveals his apprehension at seeing a dead body and the ‘powerful drug’ of reporting from the front.
He cleverly interspersed his own story of warzone journalism with interviews with other war reporters, colleagues and cameramen. Fergal Keane described his experiences in Rwanda and Allan Little and Martin Bell talked about the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Bowen reviewed his career, through El Salvador, Bosnia, Sarajevo, and Mostar to Beirut and Lebanon. I remember his reports from the Balkans and the Middle East and have always liked his direct, engaging style.
The programme was intelligently presented and examined a number of important questions about war correspondents and how objectivity can soon get lost in the heat of battle. In a world of staged press conferences with grainy footage of precision weapons always hitting their mark, Bowen is spot on to emphasise the importance of independent eye-witness accounts. Without the war reporter how are we to understand what’s really happening on the ground ?
He also devoted time to the personal toll war reporting takes on journalists and cameramen. After a bout under fire, normal life seems very tame indeed. He was candid about his time away from the front line and how it seemed unimportant and dull. This can result in psychological torment, addiction, marriage break ups and even suicide. Journalists are exposed to extreme situations of life and death, horror and exhilaration. They see misery and killing and have to report and comment on it daily. After that, normal life seems monotonous, empty and frustrating.
He was very good on the role of war reporters and what they actually do. They search for stories among the rubble, shelling and gunfire. They select facts and images to illustrate the events and tragedies of war to show what killing does to people. War is about death, and death is a terrible human story. Bowen meditated aloud about how reporting wars is intrusive. “You enter people’s lives at their worst moments. A good day for us is always the worst day or the last day for them“. He’s right. The journalist flies in, comments on personal tragedy and death and flies out again. It’s a terrible intrusion which must play on their consciences. But, as he says, “reporting the truth is essential“.
He concluded by describing his experiences reporting on the war in Lebanon and the Israeli withdrawal. Tragically, his Lebanese driver and friend, Abed Takoush, was killed by an Israeli tank shell on the border. I remember the report at the time. Jeremy Bowen was giving a piece to camera when Abed’s car received a direct hit from an Israeli tank shell. He must have died instantly. It was harrowing to watch, and must have been truly terrible to witness. No doubt some sort of turning point in Bowen’s life. People die in war and death can be cruelly indiscriminate. Be it a tank shell in war torn Lebanon, a teenage drug addict with an AK47 in Congo, merciless Serb shelling or El Salvadorian rebels on a killing spree. War is a monstrous meat grinder which devours the young and the innocent.
Jeremy Bowen is a great journalist and a thoughtful war reporter. We are lucky to have him and his experience on our screens. In the age of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ independent war reporting is as important as ever.
Grrr
Honda’s new ‘Hate something, change something’ TV ad is really, really good. It sticks out above the advertising babble and is almost irritatingly catchy. Garrison Keillor’s hypnotic little song and the brightly coloured fluffy bunny animation make it look new and different.
Using cute cartoons to sell dirty, smelly diesels is a masterstroke. It’s also very bold to run a massive campaign on the theme of hate. The ad has a suitably ironic air and leaves you feeling those clever guys at Honda have developed a really clean diesel engine. A diesel so clean that white bunnies and plastic pink flamingos would approve ! It’s more Disney than diesel, but that’s the key to its success I guess.
These days, TV ads just wash over you and it takes something for one to stick out in the crowd. You either filter the ads out, or they all melt into an indistinguishable goo in the brain marked ‘advertising’. You remember it as a car ad, but you don’t remember which car. You remember it as a toothpaste, bog roll or chocolate ad, but not necessarily which one.
Marketing messages come at us all the time from all over the place and we’re becoming more and more adept at applying the mental equivalent of a spam filter. Messages we don’t want, or like, we block out, or at least route into a subconscious bulk mail folder. The ones we like, or at least are more receptive to, we allow in. Grrr is one of those ads that gets through the spam filter…
The ad was created by the guys at Wieden & Kennedy and comes on the heels of their excellent ‘Cogs’ ad for Honda. Wieden & Kennedy position themselves as a vibrant, funky ad agency and have certainly got some big clients and created some award winning campaigns. They come complete with a beautifully simple website and an edgy weblog detailing all their ironic office exploits. Oddly, they also seem to sell T-shirts…?! They do seem more Hoxton than Honda, but hey, those wacky creatives sure did deliver the goods on this one.
No doubt, in a week I’ll be posting about that damn annoying song from the Honda ad that I can’t seem to get away from… ;o)
advertising…
“Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket”.
– George Orwell
Kerry’s Choice….. ?!
On Monday morning the New York Post splashed an exclusive frontpage scoop, ‘Kerry’s Choice – Dem picks Gephardt as VP candidate’.
A few hours later Kerry announced John Edwards as his running mate.
The New York Post got it spectacularly wrong and the scoop backfired. Apparently, the Post’s rival, the New York Daily News, sent them champagne and a note congratulating them on their gaffe. ha ha !
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Mirror fakes…
No surprise, the Mirror pictures of UK troops abusing Iraqi prisoners were hoaxes ! Piers Morgan, it’s infamous editor, has been sacked and the front page today carries a large ‘Sorry’ !
Not often a tabloid gets rumbled so spectacularly…. They deserve everything they get…
