Honda "Best yourself" (2013) 2:00 (USA)

In order to launch the 2013 Civic, and make it seem cool to millennials, Honda enlisted America's Got Talent host and all around uber-success Nick Cannon to star in a new campaign/social launch. The VO carries the same platitudes we've heard before: Be yourself, be better than yourself, strive each day, reach for the stars, etc. And it ends on the obligatory hashtag #bestyourself.

For all the ad students out there who may not know or may not have thought about it, whenever you come up with #fillintheblank, there are people on the social team whose job it is to look that up on twitter to see if anyone is using it already. If there's very little "chatter," it's considered "ownable."

In the case of #bestyourself, there was only one instance of that hashtag being used before Honda had anything to do with it. And that was written either in Indonesian or Malay. (I'm not familiar enough with either language to know for sure.)

Saya hanya berusaha utk menjadi diri yg baik & mencintai diri sendiri #BestYourSelf ,bukan kata2 omong kosong seperti #BeYourSelf :)

— DadangPesbuk (@DiditHersan) July 14, 2013

However, the first tweet using the hashtag related to Honda actually came from someone working on the campaign. So if they were hoping to seed it first that might have been how they did it. I doubt it though. David Miraglia doesn't seem like a large enough "influencer," for this to spread. My guess is he was just really amped about the mixing and wanted to share it a few weeks early.

Just finished mixing the commercials for the Honda #BestYourself campaign with @NickCannon pic.twitter.com/PAymVzaD6H

— David Miraglia (@DavidMiraglia) July 25, 2013