Cog (2003)

Directed by

Antoine Bardou-Jacquet

How it feels

This is a two-minute commercial showing a chain reaction made from car parts, like a giant machine that clicks and rolls items from one to the next. It uses no dialogue, just the sound of metal and motion.

cleverprecisesatisfyingplayfulmethodicalsmoothinnovativefluid

What happens

"Cog" is a British television and cinema advertisement launched by Honda in 2003 to promote the seventh-generation Accord line of cars. It follows the convention of a Rube Goldberg machine, utilizing a chain of colliding parts taken from a disassembled Accord. Wieden+Kennedy developed a £6 million marketing campaign around "Cog" and its partner pieces, "Sense" and "Everyday", broadcast later in the year. The piece itself was produced on a budget of £1 million by Partizan Midi-Minuit. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet directed the seven-month production, contracting The Mill to handle post-production. The 120-second final cut of "Cog" was broadcast on British television on 6 April 2003, during a commercial break in ITV's coverage of the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix. The campaign was very successful both critically and financially. Honda's UK domain saw more web traffic in the 24 hours after the ad's television debut than all but one UK automotive brand received during that entire month. The branded content attached to "Cog" through interactive television was accessed by more than 250,000 people, and 10,000 people followed up with a request for a brochure for the Honda Accord or a DVD copy of the advertisement. The high cost of 120-second slots in televised commercial breaks meant that the full version of "Cog" was broadcast only a handful of times, and only in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Sweden. Despite its limited run, it is regarded as one of the most groundbreaking and influential commercials of the 2000s, and received more awards from the television and advertising industries than any commercial in history. However, it has also faced persistent accusations of plagiarism by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, the creators of The Way Things Go (1987). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Cars 3 (2009)
• This Is a Generic Brand Video
• Hot Wheels AcceleRacers: Ignition (2005)
• Quality Products
• Choreography for Copy Machine (1991)
• Suckers (2001)
• The Road Demon
• Game: On (2004)