I Wish I Had Done That - Honda Grrr

I hate people.

Ok, that’s not really true, I love most people however there is one group of people that irritate me. This group of people can usually be found around the same time every year in the south of France and it is here that they come in their best summer wear with their Rosé ready livers and all with one aim in mind. To fill our Instagram feeds with said Rosé, lavish yacht parties and just for added measure dozens of photographs with the latest celebrity influencer holding one of the many awards they have just won in the Palais that evening.

I hate them.

Ok, to be fair I don’t hate them, you see most of them are my friends or colleagues whom I have worked with for many years and deep down inside I like them, well most of them and to be honest they all deserve to be there.

You see the irrational reason for my hatred this year was because I was not there. I was curled up in my new office, in a new country in my new job and all I could do was look at the amazing work as well as all the inspirational talks via my social feed. Which was just not the same as being there.

And I hated that. 

I hated the fact that my work was not good enough for me to be there and this just made me even angrier. With all this internal hatred swirling around inside of me, I had a moment of reflection where I was thinking… can hate be something we don’t hate and can hate be good? 

Turns out it can. I don’t hate advertising or anyone in it and seeing all that amazing work from afar only served to do one thing. It drives me to do something better to be there next year. 

So, with all this talk about hate and wanting to be better, I was reminded of a piece of work created in 2004 and it’s still to this day one of the pieces I will always hate, only because I wish I had done it.

The funny thing is, this piece of work was born out of the very thing we are talking about, hate. It was for a new diesel engine created by Honda. Yup, you heard that right, a diesel engine. 

Imagine that brief. Sell a diesel engine.

Luckily for the creatives at Weiden Kennedy, the answer was right in front of them. The lead engineer by the name of Kenichi Nagahiro was the mastermind behind the new diesel engine and the reason he designed this engine was because of his hate for diesel engines as we know them. There it was, the spark for the entire campaign idea and it came straight from the man himself.

This spark gave birth to the now-famous “Hate Something. Change Something” campaign that not only went on to win the hearts of everyone around the world it also picked up pretty much every award there was along the way, even being voted as commercial of the decade.

Hate something, change something broke all the rules the moment it hit our screens especially the infectious folk-like song and its catchy lyrics. Not only was the song great but they then made it even better by creating this amazing animation style in a world that was both magical and artful. The craft levels on this piece were beyond outstanding.

On top of that, the genius behind it was how they brought this to life by using all the cues of environmentalism from bunnies to butterflies and a rainbow for good measure.

I loved how they set up this world that hates the noisy diesel engines flying around them and all its creatures do whatever they can to knock off each horrible diesel engine one at a time until there are none left. 

The rainbow flicking one into the distance is great but then you add a couple of bunnies using a bow & arrow then to end it off a frog leaping out of the water to swallow one whole. Perfect.

Then the silence after the last noisy diesel has been taken out. The music and singing continue revealing a new, quiet and non-smelly diesel engine that is blissfully flying around the environment with all the creatures in it celebrating this new gift to the world. 

It is infectious, it is positive and all you want to do is whistle along as life and everything in it is better off now, thanks to Honda.

Which brings me back to the question. Can hate be good? 

Of course, it can, as hating something always makes you want to change it and I know for sure that all that internal hate that I have built up over the last month is going to help me change something for the better.

So, see you next year in Cannes, where hopefully I can make some work that makes you hate me.

I wish I had done that.

Gary