Honda: The Cog

Honda's The Cog commercial was no where near as viral as the Old Spice's commercials but was incredibly successful in its own right. This advertisement is similar to the previously discussed ad Guiness Tipping Point. Both of these commercials uses a cleverly designed chain reaction course to entertain its viewers. Such a creative and entertaining commercial resulted in Honda's site being the second most visited automobile site within 24 hours.



Prior to this marketing campaign, Honda products were experiencing a decline in European sales since 1998. Their products were considered inferior and Nissan took their second place as a Japanese automobile manufacturer. The interactive version of The Cog were viewed by over 250,000 people with an average of two and a half minutes spent viewing.

The entire campaign carried a substantial price tag of around $9.5 million. Around $1.6 million went directly to production of The Cog commercial. During production, an insane -606- takes was required in order to capture the perfect domino sequence. Since much of the course needed to be reset after every take, the whole filming process took four days to complete.

Guiness Tipping Point

In the previous post, the entertainment effect of dominoes was explored. Although Guinness was not the first company to capitalize on the entertainment value of dominoes, they performed a very well done attempt for their marketing campaign. This visually enjoyable "Guinness Tipping Point" commercial was shot in Iruya, Salta, Argentina. Director Nicolai Fuglsig mentioned challenges imposed by the high altitude and the remoteness of the location.

The Tipping Point commercial cost was in excess of $16 million which is equivalent to £10 million. This large price tag subsequently labeled this advert as one of the most expensive commercial in the world. It is definitely the most expensive that Guinness has ever done.

There were a total of 6,000 dominoes which took 2 days to set up but just 14 seconds to topple.

Fortunately, the car toppling section was successfully done in a single take but the number of takes the other sections required are not specifically mentioned. Director Fuglsiq did vaguely state that frequent resets of thousands of props were required. Other parts of the domino effect included 10,000 books, 400 tyres, 75 mirrors, 50 fridges, and 45 wardrobes.

A total of 1000 villagers took part in creation of this commercial. This accounts for most of the total population in the relatively small village of Iruya. One of the difficulties the director mentioned was working with the massive number of villagers who did not understand the concepts of filming or acting.

There are many who are doubting the total cost figures of this ad campaign but it seems about reasonable to me. There were not only raw payment to participants, salaries of professionals, cost of equipment, cost of food/supplies for everyone, cost of transporting everything but also a full 24 hour of footage captured with only up to 90 minutes of it being used. Surveying the proper location along with advanced planning also adds to the final figure.

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Five Weird Commercials

I'm sure many have seen the insane Old Spice commercials featuring Isaiah Mustafa "The Man Your Man could Smell Like". The tactic of adding extremely bizarre elements to a marketing campaign produced some very successful commercials. These commercials were not as well known as the Old Spice commercials but they are just as peculiar.



A Japanese commercial about high blood pressure which I had to ask myself "what did I just watch?". I found this commercial to be strange but also comical. This is one of the craziest way to advertise a product.




This was a very clever Sega Saturn commercial which is now around 15 years old. It has the element of crazy yet amusing at the same time. It was very relevant to their products unlike some other commercials.




A fairly odd commercial about... light bulbs. It does not seem to be about anything at all until the very end.




This commercial has successfully convinced me to never have kids. Wow, just wow. The product this commercial is advertising makes the commercial far out there though.




I did not find a relation between this commercial and its product at all. The girl at one point almost appear to be having a seizure. This is a unique and peculiar commerical.