Honda block books 'green' ad space in Saturday Guardian

Carmaker Honda invests in TV and press advertising to highlight eco-awareness campaign
Mark Sweney
Guardian Weekly, Friday 3 April 2009 07.06 BST

Honda has taken all the advertising space in the first 11 pages in Saturday's Guardian and an entire ad break on Channel 4 this weekend as part of its campaign to get more members of the public to be "do gooders" regarding the environment.
The car manufacturer is to launch a 2 min 10 sec animated ad, called "Do'er", which will take the entire first ad break during Channel 4's UK terrestrial TV premiere of Al Gore's polemical environment documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which is being broadcast on Saturday, 4 April, from 9.20pm.
Honda's "Do'er" commercial, which will be preceded by a special announcement on Channel 4 ahead of the ad break, is only planned to run once in the UK.
The "Do'er" ad is narrated by the distinctively voiced American author and broadcaster and Honda commercial regular, Garrison Keillor.
Honda will also be the only brand name seen in ad space in the first 11 pages of Saturday's Guardian with a print version of the "Do'er" campaign. A range of different press ad formats will be used, including a number that have never appeared in the Guardian before.
The "Do'er" animation and press campaign, made by ad agency Wieden & Kennedy London, attempts to raise awareness of the efforts Honda is making to try to be more eco-friendly. The campaign also offers tips to get consumers to make a difference, such as not revving engines and not stop-starting in jams, and will promote the launch of Honda's new hybrid car, the Insight, in the UK.
"None of this has been done before with a newspaper, as far as we know. We are incredibly pleased," said Ian Armstrong, the manager of customer communications at Honda UK. "We are at our best telling stories about what we have achieved or what we are looking to do in the future."
Honda will launch its main European TV and press campaign for the Insight, developed by Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, on 14 April.
"The Inconvenient Truth is one of the most talked about films about the environment and we wanted a good story idea, Do'er, that could bring innovation into the [media] marketplace" said Armstrong.
He pointed to Honda's media tie-up with Channel 4 last year to launch the Accord, where a team of skydivers made a live TV ad spelling out the word Honda, as an example of how the car manufacturer has a track record of looking beyond "mainstream media ideas".
Honda is also launching an online challenge, called Grow It, where the public can log on to be assigned to look after five plants from a selection of 24.
The idea, said Armstrong, is that people monitor the progress of their plants through a web cam and, by answering a series of eco-themed questions, can see their crop get fed or watered and grow.
"Honda has always behaved against category," said Alex Conaway, the group account director at W&K. "This is even more important during the extreme conditions in which the car industry is currently operating in. The 'Do'er' film and the Guardian takeover is about telling stories about the brand and making people again feel an emotional attachment to Honda."
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