Honda Civic's power of screams

Yesterday Wieden and Kennedy, London unleashed a new Honda ad on the world. In the 120 second ad a 60-person choir vocalises what it's like to drive a Honda.

super adgrunts see it here.

Kim Papworth, creative director at Wieden + Kennedy London explains the brief: "Honda’s new Civic is all about driving feeling. Music is all about feeling. So we thought having a choir "singing" driving could be amazingly powerful and emotional. The aim of the commercial was to find a way of expressing the human experience of driving - not just the big, fast, powerful sounds but also the more subtle sounds of driving - the sound of an electric window closing or a Biro rolling across the dashboard. The sort of moments that never get spoken about but that everyone feels."

First the creative team set about recording the sounds of the new Civic, and then ten singers were hired to recreate the sounds vocally. This experimentation was a complex and time consuming process, first the sounds were picked apart so that each member of the choir could voice a different part, and then orchestrated together again. The whole process of recording, picking sounds apart, experimenting, rehearsing and finally putting it all together again took six months.

At W+K the creative team on this was Matt Gooden, Michael Russoff and Ben Walker while the ad was directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet at Partizan.

The 120 second spot will run for one week and will then be chopped into little bits and run as 60 second and 40 second cutdowns. Le sigh. Catch the long version while you can!

You can see the ad and the making of it at Hondas flash website.