“You’ve gotta come and see this!” my wife exclaimed as she ran into my office (which is any room with no kids in it at the time) last night.
“What is it?” I was curious what had made her so excited in the middle of the night.
“Just watch,” she said, unpausing the DVR. She played the commercial for the 2014 Honda Odyssey.
Normally she doesn’t get excited about commercials, but this one had her head spinning. “Honey, I need that van!” kept rolling off her lips for the rest of the night.
Honda is really onto something here.
What Makes This a Great Commercial?
There’s nothing particularly brilliant about the special effects. It’s not thigh-slappingly funny. But it got the only thing that truly matters right.
It showcases the built-in vacuum.
The commercial is brilliant because it highlights a brilliant move Honda made when they designed this car.
image via theshoppingmama.com
Maybe they hired a mind reader, or maybe they just asked van drivers what they wanted in a new van. However they came up with the idea, they’re now offering something that moms and dads (the ideal customers for vehicles like this) have been wishing they’d had for years.
That’s what marketing is all about folks. Finding out what people want and helping them get their hands on it.
Honda’s the first car manufacturer to offer this innovation (if I can call it that), but they won’t be alone for long. Their unique selling proposition won’t be unique for long.
What do they need to do to keep the advantage?
P.S. Are you having trouble crafting your own rock-solid USP? You should consider this.
I’m sure this communicates the message that Honda was targeting but to strategically evaluate this advertisement I would have gone through the method I was schooled on: Is it on brief/Strategy? What is the communication objective? What is the “Big Idea”? My guess is that this ad achieved all of these and its easy to see what the communication is but without those elements, namely the creative brief, one cant say concretely that this ad achieved its objective. I would guess that it achieved all of these. I’ll take for granted that Honda uncovered an unmet consumer need that they felt a vacuum was something they wanted and might be a difference maker in their evaluation of a car purchase decision.