Hasta La Creative!

Some say the most powerful thing you can build is a feeling. But they’re wrong. The most powerful thing you can build is a Jaeger.

Another great ad by Wieden & Kennedy, an agency that seemingly can’t put a foot wrong; every high-profile ad produced by them so far this year has been immaculate. In this piece, we’re shown Honda engineers painstakingly constructing the joyous ‘feeling’ of driving; an emotion they’ve been trying to sell us in recent years. Tonally, one recalls the dreamy quality of Volkswagen’s Night Drive (2007), which took dimly-lit lingering shots and set it to Dylan Thomas reading Under Milkwood.

There’s an interesting blend here between arty scene-setting and thematically a lack of product (in the sense they’re not talking about the car), juxtaposed with a whole heap of product shots. Tangential advertising, I suppose this could be called. One might even go as far to say that if advertisers can be auteurs, then this has W+K’s stamp all over it. As good as this is (and it is), ads like these absolutely need to be shown in the cinema and not on the small screen (sorry Harvey), so I hope media buyers are taking note.

Just so we’re all clear, the fussy engineers and scientists creating the environment around the car to unleash a powerful feeling are a metaphor for the work and precision that goes into building the car itself. If I had to be nitpicky here, when we’re talking about complex ideas expressed as visual metaphors, it might be a bit much for the average bloke on the street, but I doubt the Creatives at Wieden are losing sleep as they fuck supermodels over huge piles of cash in their private jet on the way to Cannes.*

*(Disclaimer, author has some issues.)