Honda is a brand with a legacy of powerful innovations, successful products, and motorsports championships, but as the founder of Honda himself once said, “Success is 99% failure.” Chasing our dreams isn’t only about achieving success; it’s about overcoming obstacles as well as learning from our failures. Our client challenged us with creating a campaign that communicated this universal message of determination in a way only Honda could. And while most other automakers are saying the same things, touting their successes, style, performance, electrification, efficiency, etc., we decided to do something risky: stand out in this sea of sameness by talking about something deeper and more honest.
Our objective was to embrace failure as a vital part of chasing dreams. The campaign expresses the brand’s challenging spirit, shares the Honda DNA, and creates a pure emotional brand connection with our audience.Our sole objective was to grow our audience’s sentiment towards the Honda brand by creating an evocative story and message that resonates with them and reflects their attitude to life, dreams, success, and failure.
We aimed to connect with an audience of current Honda owners, potential owners, and future owners, all with a shared belief in the power of dreams. The strategic approach was to connect our audience to the Honda DNA, warts and all, in a very human, emotional way that would get people rooting for the Honda brand. As it was a brand campaign, there was no new product or service that was a mandate to highlight, only to use anything in the Honda universe to create pure emotional brand connection.
Our commercial tells the story of different individuals each with strong ties to Honda and each on their own path to success, including Formula One World Champions Max Verstappen and Ayrton Senna. The film hinges around a reverse poem technique that literally flips the script on failure as each character overcomes different obstacles to realize their dreams. When the poem is read one way, they tell a story of hopelessness and failure. But when the supers scroll in the reverse direction, the meaning of the poem flips to something positive and tells a whole new story – one of hope, determination, and success. It was directed by acclaimed director Rupert Sanders and narrated by the voice of Honda, John Cena.
The commercial used a mix of found footage of Honda in motorsports, and footage we shot to capture the raw emotion of the individuals, as they went through the trials and tribulations of chasing their dreams. The edit weaved together their different journeys to form one cohesive narrative, as they all overcame failure in different forms and continued the pursuit of their dreams. The supers were designed and animated to elegantly express the sentiment of the poem, in a way that didn’t distract from the footage, but drew enough attention to each line and beat of the story. The tone was honest, emotional and inspiring, helping it stand out from other car commercials.
The media plan was formulated around connecting with our general population audience across a multitude of high-impact, contextually relevant online media placements. Our edit and poem supers were adapted to each online placement, in duration, ratio, and layout of the titles.
“Unstoppable Dreams” performed in the top 5% across all automotive (lux + nonlux) Tier 1 ads (national brand campaigns) year-to-date. Additionally, the :60 brand spot scored above norm on all Ace testing categories (Attention, Likability, Watchability, Information, Change, Desire, Relevance) for Gen Pop and exceeded norm Ace scores for Hispanic and African American 12-Month Intenders.
According to verbatims from testing, the audiences enjoyed the commercial and linked it to the Honda brand. It scored 81% for Brand Match within Gen Pop and saw the top-scoring emotions “inspiring” and “heartfelt" across all audiences.
The responses online have been overwhelmingly positive, with many comments across Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter calling it one of the best ads they’ve ever seen.
