The world and its aunt are giving this debut campaign from Boston agency Mullen for Honda’s Acura a monumental monstering.
Honda moved Acura, its posh SUV, out of RPA when it reviewed the whole account last year (RPA kept the rest). But Acura is a biggie, with a $200m or so budget.
Why all the abuse? Well it’s one of those ads that seems to take the view that Implausible Platitudes are better than saying anything much about the product. Much like most mobile phone advertising and recent efforts from TBWA on behalf of Southwest Airlines and, gulp, Apple.
Even Wieden+Kennedy trod something of the same route recently with its debut campaign for Facebook, involving the metaphysical properties of a chair.
Actually W+K probably started the trend, if such it is, with its rightly-praised Eminem epic for Chrysler. Affecting a heroic style is a high wire act at best.
This sounds a lot like the samsung campaign that said “Made for Humans”….
Chiat did ‘Made for the human race’ for Nissan years ago in the USA. That was a good campaign that ran for years. This….pfffttt.