On 29th May at 8.10pm 2008, Channel 4 and Honda pioneered the most adventurous commercial break ever.
Broadcast live during the first break of Come Dine with Me, 19 international skydivers had 3 mins 20 secs to leap out of a plane over Madrid and spell out the word Honda, inspired by the car manufacturer's new advertising campaign "Difficult is worth doing".
Channel 4's sales director, Andy Barnes said "We wanted to create something unmissable and what better way to produce something 'must see' than to stage the first live ad event on TV. It's about creating talkability on a big scale, managing the risk and being seen as pioneers for it."
- The recent Honda Live Ad generated a huge amount of editorial media coverage and online buzz.
- Prior to transmission stories appeared in the Metro and on guardian.co.uk, timesonline, BBC News, the Sun, Daily Express, Telegraph.co.uk and Mirror.co.uk.
- To date there have been over 300,000 views of the Honda Live Ad on Youtube post transmission
- There is also reference to the Honda Live ad on Honda’s Wikipedia page
- Viewers loved the ad, and praised Channel 4 and 4 Creative for taking risks and delivering “the perfect result”. Another viewer said “Channel 4 are great for doing amazing stuff like this; no other channel would allow it! They are excellent”
- 32% of viewers who saw the live ad said that they would consider purchasing a Honda is the next 12 months, significantly higher than non-viewers
Source: Honda Live Ad (SPA Study, Wavemetrics Study)
The number of visits to the Honda website increased significantly
Over the period of transmission, Honda was the 4 highest ranked website in the automotive category moving from an average of 7th.(Hitwise) ( Daily ranks in automotive, measured by visits, based on UK usage)
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