

Honda Insight's immersive ad on Vimeo - marcusbooster
http://vimeo.com/4281939

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mattlyon
I love how this is entirely against Vimeo's TOS:
<http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:11585>

except for the special cases they make.

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malbiniak
Fair point, but I'd like to think that if Hummer came to them, they'd say no.
Something about an affordable hybrid car seems aligned with the personalities
running Vimeo.

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ivankirigin
That's just bullshit. The last thing I want from a content host is an agenda
and bias against certain players.

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malbiniak
The power of the consumer is the choice to support the vendor they identify
with. Spoiler alert: each content host, vendor, business has an agenda, it's
just a matter of how quickly you can identify it.

And please - hold it against a business for trying to add additional revenue?
How's your balance sheet?

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ivankirigin
On the latter point, it's the opposite. Companies shouldn't leave money on the
table for ideological reasons as petty as too-low-mpg. [note that I don't
think vimeo actually did anything wrong here - it's the idea that is bullshit,
not any action they have taken. I loved the Ad.]

Consumers should move towards vendors that are as neutral as possible.
Personal bias shouldn't influence a business decision.

My agenda for Tipjoy is to make money. We're completely content neutral,
within the bounds of the law.

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Dauntless
That was great and well done. You got to love the "what the...?" moment it
gives when it does something so unexpected by your brain and the "waaa...
nice" at the end. It doesn't say much about the product, something about
Honda, but still, it's a great ad imho.

Also, to make my comment more useful; check out this youtube video :
<http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii>

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stcredzero
Ads have been "not saying much about the product" for awhile. Advertisers have
known that ads work best on the emotional level since the early 20th century.

See: The Century of the Self

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3LSyck0YTE>

To me, there is a clear parallel between this ad and Hacker News itself!

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wensing
Unrelated to the ad, but I must say I am so thrilled with Honda for taking
hybrid out of the luxury trim / status category and bringing it down to
something that you can do without the huge upfront cost.

I got to see one of these Insight's in person at a recent Honda event, and I
knew immediately 'this is my next car'.

For any fans of Honda (or just the curious), I highly recommend all of Honda's
videos here: <http://dreams.honda.com>

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mkuhn
Yeah, it is amazing how cheap Honda is offering the Insight.

I've been working on a Hybrid related project and done some research. One of
the most interesting was an informal interview with the guy who headed the
development the FSI technology at Audi done by a colleague of mine. This guy
and his team introduced the technology to Audi's Le Mans racing efforts and
then within 3 years brought the technology to regular cars. When we asked him
to estimate the costs of a full hybrid powertrain including everything (R&D,
Marketing, Party, Assembly etc.) he threw out a number around 20'000 € (which
is around US-$26'000) which means that Hybrid cars currently must be highly
subsidized by the producers of such cars as the Prius and especially the
Insight.

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Timothee
I appreciated in particular the fact that they _really_ did it like the ad is
showing it, by parking a lot of cars in the desert and turning their lights on
and off, as opposed, for example, to the recent ad by Samsung with the sheep
in the hills (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iCXvJ-jJzI>) that clearly had
at least some parts done artificially.

Nowadays, the whole point of that kind of things is to do it for real. Doing
it through CGI is just easier and defeats the purpose. It actually reminds me
of the Bravia ad from 4-5 years ago
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A&fmt=22](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A&fmt=22))
where Sony had tens of thousands of colored balls bouncing in a San Francisco
street.

The collaboration with Vimeo with the Flash overlay is also a nice touch.

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vaksel
apparently they didn't [http://www.adrants.com/2009/03/honda-insight-
commercials-car...](http://www.adrants.com/2009/03/honda-insight-commercials-
carbon.php)

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danielh
There is even a making of on vimeo <http://vimeo.com/4295148>

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tdonia
i wonder what honda paid for that?

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dkokelley
Wow. Props to Honda's marketing department. Reminds me of
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI2MFvOC94A> where they gut grooves in the
road so that when a car drove over them it played a song. They did this for a
civic commercial.

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quizbiz
how?

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marcusbooster
It looks like a Flash overlay. If you scroll down during the video you can
keep right clicking until you get html.

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amvp
It breaks if you resize the page text in browser (Ctrl++), before stating the
video, and shows you how the overlay fits over the page.

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Aron
Not from the makers of Pontiac

