Techotic

British Broadcasting company Channel 4 and Honda have staged an ambitious first ever live advert on British Television during the first ad break of ‘Come Dine With Me’ at 20:00, where a team of 19 sky divers had three minutes and 20 seconds to spell out out the word Honda, inspired by the car manufacturer’s new advertising strapline: “Difficult is worth doing” over Madrid.

Among the sky diving team is European champion Phil Curtis.

Organisers were yesterday hoping the weather in Spain would hold as the team practised. “There will be no time delay and no CGI [computer-generated imagery]. If it works, people will know who it’s for. If it doesn’t, they won’t,” said Ian Armstrong, Honda’s manager of customer communications.

The stunt is a means of gaining publicity for Honda’s new multi-million pound ad campaign, which features 45 skydivers promoting the Honda Accord by creating a series of shapes over the Mojave desert to reflect new features on the car.

But it is also part of a wider drive by broadcasters to maintain the relevance of TV advertising in the era of fast-forward. Advertising agencies have been forced to raise their game in recent years, to get viewers’ attention. Increased choice and viewer fragmentation, driven by the explosion in digital channels, have made advertising breaks easier than ever to avoid. “Time shifted” viewing via personal video recorders like Freeview Plus and Sky Plus has also made advertisers and their agencies work ever harder to prevent viewers skipping their commercials.

“More people are watching television than ever before. But things are becoming more complicated. People have to want to watch something, you can’t force them. People will navigate towards the good stuff and ignore the bad stuff,” said Armstrong.

The results can be seen in the spate of award winning “event” campaigns of recent years, including Sony Bravia’s “balls” and “paint” adverts, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk gorilla and Honda’s “cog” campaign, which featured an intricate study in perpetual motion. “We always want to find clever ways of engaging with people and reaching people,” said Honda’s marketing and communications manager, Harry Cooklin, explaining how Channel 4’s idea won out over 19 others.

Channel 4’s sales director, Andy Barnes, who like other broadcast executives is battling a looming advertising downturn, said the advert, which required special dispensation from the advertising watchdog, broke “the boundaries of the perceived confines of TV advertising”.

“We wanted to create something unmissable and what better way to produce something ‘must see’ than to stage the first live ad event on TV,” he added. “It’s about creating talkability on a big scale, managing the risk and being seen as pioneers for it.”

[via guardian]