Honda - The Cog

Honda: The Cog

This advert, directed in 2003 by the music video director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, is for the Honda Accord and Bardou-Jacquet combined components of the Honda Accord to create a complicated two minute chain reaction. The perfect timing and precision of the chain reaction is effective as it implies the same is true for the car. The advert begins with a small, single rolling cog and ends with the entire car. The choreographed ballet of cogs turning, windscreen wipers crawling is novel, effective, and may linger in peoples minds (Keazor & Thorston, 2010).

The silence of the advert draws you in, and forces the viewer to concentrate on the advert and the intricate nature of its domino effect. The effect ends with the car's trunk being closed, which makes the car roll from a tilting platform. This is accompanied by a voice asking "Isn't it nice when things just work?" (Keazor & Thorston, 2010). As few words are spoken during the advert, the words that are have a powerful effect.

This Honda Accord advert has been labelled the best car advert of all time and has been described as extremely distinctive (Grainge, 2012).

Keazor, H., & Thorston, W. (2010). Rewind, Play, Fast Forward: The Past, Present and Future of the Music Video. Cultural and Media Studies, 18-19.
Grainge, P. (2012). A song and dance: Branded entertainment and mobile promotion. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2, 165-180.