newspaper award for Honda ads

As reported in The Guardian:

Our campaign for Honda to celebrate staff's return to work as its Swindon factory re-opened has won an award for best national newspaper campaign of last month.

The campaign featured poems in praise of workers at the plant, which closed for four months earlier this year because of the slump in car sales, against a background of images evoking factory life such as bacon, a cup of tea and an iron.

Honda's ad featuring the bacon rasher (below) has been named best national press ad for June in the Awards for National Newspaper Advertising.

All five ads in the campaign have been nominated for the national ad of the year of awards to be held in January.

Judge Darren Bailes of VCCP said:

"The reopening could have been swept under the carpet all too easily - the shutdown being seen as a real blow to the pride of the brand. But thankfully client and agency saw sense. This recession is something we're all in together, the workers and the manufacturers are all in the same boat.

Bacon, irons and mugs of tea make it seem far more real than say, the rebooting of a robot arm. Good news for the people of Swindon. Good news for Honda. Good news for the guy who delivers the bacon."

For more info see the ANNAs site.

Also interesting to see that news coverage of the economic situation in the UK continues to refer to the "Honda effect".  Not that we coined this phrase, of course. We picked up on it following a reference by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, in a speech at the Lord mayor's banquet. Sounds like a swanky affair where they probably weren't tucking into mugs of tea and bacon sarnies.