Honda withdraws "suicide car" advert.

Honda received so many complaints for its latest australian commercial, that it withdrew the ad less than 48 hours after its Sunday evening release.

In the ad, created by Foote Cone & Belding, a man on a rooftop carpark admires the new Honda so much that his own car commits caricide by driving itself off the roof.

"We were showing [that] it was the car doing it by itself and we focused on the jealousy of the vehicle. We didn't expect the insensitivities to come through so strongly." said Andrew Scott to smh.au

"The national depression initiative, beyondblue said the company had demonstrated gross insensitivity to the major Australian health issue of suicide." from bandt.com

"People ringing in with heart-wrenching stories of their own personal experience with suicide and within the light of that, we're not in the business of creating offence or harm in the community and effective yesterday we pulled the ad," said Honda Australia director Lindsay Smolley to abc.net

Also reported at JustAuto. Hat Tip to Clayton on adlist.

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tlevitz's picture

hmmm... does anyone remember the classic teen movie "Better Off Dead?"

Perhaps the car in this spot should've been shown quietly sneaking off to the junkyard, Kevorkian style.

Not to take anything away from a tragic, tragic thing but I'm a little confused as to the newly drawn boundaries. Just to be safe, I'm proposing we limit all new work to... testimonials!

claymore's picture

[clay watches in awe as the entire advertising creative community attacks tlevitz with wiffle bats]

AnonymousCoward's picture

I would have liked to see the advert before they pulled it.

Does anyone else feel like Honda should have tun it by us first?

blabla's picture

Damn, I just spotted this at Adage.com and came here to make a post about it. AS usualy, you're way ahead of me (and adage) dab.

Neaner's picture

I bet ten bucks that adage reads this site, and cuss every time she/the admins find the quirky news first. Hence the "crain" banners (up in the banner/visitors stats).