Honda has quite a good history in creating sincere, original and amazing ads – from the classic “Cog” where a sequence of car-parts fall in domino-style, to the choir singing the sound of a Honda, and now, another breathtaking advertisement that again redefines the scene.
With the tagline “Difficult is worth doing”, Honda’s latest advertisement involves skydiving – 19 of them exited a plane and form the letters H, O, N, D ,A sequentially in free fall – no computer effects or stuff like that. The entire clip was telecast live on UK television too – here’s the video of that jump:
Their blog ‘Difficult is worth doing’ also has some documentation of the effort and some of the behind-the-scenes preparation and action. I find it quite cool for Honda to portray the ‘stick-your-head-down and really solve the problems on the ground’ sorta attitude – from the series of ad (as well as the tagline of the current one), you could feel Honda’s inherent desire to really face the challenge head-on and not try to get shortcuts (e.g. the “Cog” advertisement was repeated 600 times to get that perfect one-take; no computer effects that would’ve easily visually accomplished what they’ve set out to do physically).
And here’s Honda’s “Jump” ad, the final, produced version of this endeavor:
