Honda skydivers push limits of TV adverts.
In a new definition of a publicity stunt, Channel 4 and Honda have turned to a team of skydivers to tackle the problem of viewers tuning out of traditional television advertising.
On Thursday night the broadcaster was due to devote an entire 3m 20sec break in the middle of Come Dine With Me, its dinner party programme, to a live sky diving jump in which 19 stuntmen spelt out the carmaker’s brand name.
Billed as the first live advertisement in modern times, the campaign is the latest attempt by advertisers and broadcasters to find alternatives to the 30-second spot.
The development of digital video recorders such as Sky+ and Tivo, which allow ads to be skipped, has forced advertising agencies and channels’ sales teams to collaborate on more innovative attempts to keep the viewer’s attention.
“We wanted to create something unmissable,” said Andy Barnes, the broadcaster’s sales director. “This concept breaks the boundaries of the perceived confines of TV advertising,” he added, highlighting a Channel 4 campaign called “innovating the break”.
The campaign follows initiatives such as LG’s Scarlet campaign in which the television manufacturer ran advertisements appearing to trail a glamorous new television show, which turned out to be a promotion for the design features of its “hot new series” of screens.
Thursday night’s live advertisement, while designed to demonstrate the enduring power of television advertising, was backed up by a complex multimedia and public relations campaign.
The campaign’s developers – including Channel 4’s in-house creative team, Wieden + Kennedy, Starcom, Collective and Hicklin Slade & Partners – spent more than a month pushing the Honda slogan of “difficult is worth doing” before Thursday night’s slot.
A poster campaign, a series of unbranded television “teaser” advertisements and a website, have been backed up by digital advertising and a drive to get press coverage. All are building up to a traditional 30-second advertising campaign, starting on June 1, said Ian Armstrong, marketing manager of Honda UK.
“The 30-second ad is alive and well,” Mr Barnes said, pointing to BARB data released this week which showed that commercial television had enjoyed its best April in five years.
For Honda, however, the elements surrounding the core 30-second campaign are designed to generate the intangible buzz of word-of-mouth marketing, Mr Barnes added.
Thursday night’s sky-dive would almost certainly “go on YouTube of its own accord”, Mr Armstrong predicted. “Commercially that’s a fantastic result as it means our marketing investment becomes more efficient because consumers are doing our marketing for us.”