Born Of Hate

hinese Cultural Revolution propaganda. The fall of the Berlin Wall. Liberace's golf course. These were some of the diverse influences that inspired the look of Wieden + Kennedy in London's "Grrr," the Honda spot sweeping award shows this year and a favorite for the Grand Prix at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, this week.But the true inspiration for the 90- second TV and cinema ad, which cost about about $1 million to produce, was sparked by a speech by Honda senior chief engineer Kenichi Nagahiro, who openly professed hatred of diesel engines and agreed to create one only if he could start from scratch."When we were asked to do an ad for launching the diesel engine, we got really interested in this hate thing, how hate can push you forward," recalls senior copywriter Sean Thompson. "In tandem with that, we started thinking about a song, because a song is happy—so what if we wrote a song of hate?"Thus, the concept of "positive hate" was born. Unlike most spots, the creatives developed the song first; the visuals came next. Copywriter Michael Russoff, who writes music in his spare time, wrote the song with help from Thompson, as well as Richard Russell, who left Wieden last year to go to Ogilvy & Mather in London."We basically sat down in a room and strummed on a guitar," Thompson says. "Michael had been thinking about a song anyway. We just kind of got to the words 'Can hate be good, can hate be great,' and it had a really nice rhythm to it. We wanted to keep the words really simple."A whistling part was added because "it's normally associated with happy tunes," Thompson says.The next step was to take it to creative directors Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth. Davidson knew that singing was involved, but he was unprepared for what came next: Thompson, Russell and Russoff entered Davidson's office and sang the song to him. "What surprised me most was Sean whistling," he says. "Kim and I liked the slightly homegrown feel. Music is often overproduced."They discussed creating visuals about a "hate parade"—the opposite of Berlin's annual rave-like Love Parade—or something like the dated look of the film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, but neither seemed right. Then "we had this brainwave, engines flying through this world. The story-board was a basic three-act structure, introducing the 'hate' world, having it invaded by dirty smelly engines, and having the engines destroyed," Thompson says.Animation was chosen for the same reason as the tempo of the song: it seemed warm and cheery—the perfect juxtaposition to hate, Thompson adds. In March 2004, a month after receiving the brief, the team had to present to the client. Granted, its road was paved a bit with the success of "Cog," Honda's spot showing a chain reaction of car parts, which had won top prizes at the Clios and the British Design & Art Direction show last year. The team went to Honda's London headquarters and presented to Honda marketing manager Matt Coombe and head of marketing Simon Thompson by playing the song for them—again, live—before showing them the storyboard. "If you present the idea with music, in a way, it bypasses people's normal critical abilities," Russoff says. "They feel it, rather than analyzing it."The client's reaction was any creative's dream. "They were really bowled over. You could have heard a pin drop," Simon Thompson says. "I said, [you can] do it on one condition, that it doesn't change. That's how I felt about it. It perfectly communicated exactly what the Honda was trying to do."The Wieden team then recorded the song with radio host Garrison Keillor, longtime voice of Honda U.K. Keillor was piped in from the U.S. via the Internet to Amber Music in London. Although the three creatives had recorded a demo of the song, and liked how it sounded, Keillor's version "raised the bar," Sean Thompson says. "His voice is so mesmerizing, it adds so much more to the piece." Amber spent about three months adding instrumentation, such as kazoos and clarinets, and then taking them out again, trying to get a natural, not overly-produced tone.Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith of London's Nexus Productions were enlisted to create the animation based on their input during the bidding process: to make the "hate" world look like "Liberace's golf course." Smith, Foulkes and producer Chris O'Reilly then gathered source material: Chinese propaganda, manicured Japanese gardens and golf courses—everything that had a strong symmetry to it. The animation—a combination of 2D and 3D, including hand sketches and computer graphics—took over five months and about 25 animators and modelers. One of the most difficult scenes was the 31-second uncut opening shot. "It was incredibly hard to plan," O'Reilly recalls. "If one thing got tweaked, it could potentially topple the whole shot." Also challenging was deciding what characters fit in the fictitious world: Flamingos with baseball bats worked, but monkeys didn't. ("Maybe monkeys are too cheeky, not cuddly," Wieden's Thompson theorizes.) "Grrr" finally broke in September—seven months after the brief—as part of an estimated $7 million campaign that included interactive, radio and print ads, an online game, a DVD for dealers and a guerrilla postcard and sticker effort. Consumer response figures indicate it has worked. While the overall car market saw a 2 percent drop in Web site visitors during the ad's four-week run, traffic to Honda's site was up nearly 43 percent, and 20,055 people registered to receive more information about the diesel engine. While the process seems to have gone smoothly for such a sweeping endeavor, the unique positioning of "positive hate" and the idea of pitching diesel engines via a trippy cartoon certainly had its risks. Wieden's Thompson says, "We just went with the idea, and jumped off a cliff."Will an animal-filled, psychedelic cartoon about how hate can actually be a good thing take the Grand Prix in the film competition this year? I can't see the film jury making any other choice for the top prize in Cannes this week, but stranger things have happened at the sun-and-booze-soaked ad fest on the Riviera. Two years ago, another beloved Honda commercial from Wieden + Kennedy in London, went into the competition propped as the sure-fire winner. Yet when it came to final deliberations, the jury, presided over by Wieden + Kennedy co-founder and president Dan Wieden, concluded that "Cog" would not be hailed as the best advertising in the world that year. The captivating spot, which documented the assembly of an Accord using a chain reaction of moving car parts, was deemed too similar to an art film of the same ilk. While the jury explained that Ikea's "Lamp," the Spike Jonze-directed tale of a dejected, discarded lamp, was insightful, original and strategic, "Cog" was appreciated for its accomplished production, but denied the top prize—ultimately because of the lack of purity in the idea. It did, however, later win top honors at the Clios, One Show and the Andys. Will "Grrr" suffer the same fate? It is highly unlikely that this unbelievably magical piece of film will not garner the gold it deserves. While there are certainly some strong entries in film worthy of recognition this year—including a Singing in the Rain homage from Volkswagen, a nighttime dreamscape for Adidas, a despondent Russian family without milk, to name a few of my favorites—the industry hasn't seen another spot quite of this magnitude touch audiences worldwide. The commercial has already dominated the awards shows, winning the highest honors at the Clios, One Show, Andys and D&AD. The notoriously stingy D&AD jury even gave it a Best Use of Music gold this year, the first time the organization has deemed an entry worthy of that honor in its 43-year history. "Grrr" will likely take home the first Cannes Lion in film for Best use of Music as well. ( I'd much rather listen to Karen O's commission for Adidas, "Hello Tomorrow," on my iPod than the Honda ditty, but the bouncing whistling tune is awfully infectious and hard to shake once you've heard it. And the choreography of the animation depends on it.) At times, a perceived front-runner like "Grrr" will often feel tired to jury members who have sat through award show after award show screenings. A powerful first-time viewing can go a long way toward gold. But this spot stands up to incessant viewings. It's kaleidoscopic, iridescent and it gets better with each viewing. A new detail waits to be discovered each time. Chickens throwing their eggs at the sputtering, flying diesel engines; flowers coughing at the smog; deer with "hate" antlers looking on; a sparkling flamingo procession—every single frame of the spot captures your undivided attention. How many spots can you say that about?The tools used to make it are not new: Animation and jingles have been used in advertising since the early days of television. But when combined with Honda's tagline, "Power of dreams," magic happens. While everyone may not buy the spot's environmental message, the larger idea that good can come out of anything, even something as putrid and corrosive as hate, is a powerful and inspiring message. And isn't that ultimately what Cannes is supposed to be about?

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Born Of Hate

Mae Anderson

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Mae Anderson