Text of article about choir ad (from Monday's Guardian)

Singing the praises of the new Honda
What on earth to do next? First Honda UK garnered worldwide acclaim three years ago with Cog, the TV ad in which car parts formed a complex time-and-motion machine. Last year, it followed up with a psychedelic animated diesel engine, Grrr, which landed the car company and its advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy London the industry's highest honour, the film grand prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival.

On Friday Honda will unveil its follow-up: Choir, the advert launching the new Honda Civic. And if it receives the reaction the company predicts, the race for 2006's most creative advert for will be over before it has begun.

Genuinely different, Choir features a massed group of 60 vocalists "singing" the sounds of a Honda Civic journeying through city streets and the wide open road. The singers thump their chests as wheels bounce over cobbles. Basses growl the deeper rumble of the engine while sopranos sing out its higher whine. At one point a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman opens her mouth to emit the soft squeal of a tyre turning sharply in a concrete car park.

"The hardest sound problem was nothing to do with the Honda," says Steve Sidwell, the composer and arranger who turned the mechanical and electronic cadences of the Civic into a written score. "A pen rolls across the dashboard at one point. That was hard. One of the singers managed to tap the underside of his teeth with his fingers and change the shape of his mouth."

The choir was filmed performing the score in a London car park in late November, after production company Partisan had lovingly shot the car.

"We just have to be a bit different," says Matthew Coombe, Honda UK marketing and communications manager. Honda competes with its rivals Volkswagen and Toyota with about one third of their marketing budgets. It will spend £3.2m on screening Choir and £250,000 on print advertising. The Honda website will be crucial, as many car buyers now browse the internet before they set foot in a showroom.

But then why the heavy investment in a two-minute TV ad? Jonathan Campbell, group account director at Wieden + Kennedy London, says the advert is so long because Honda seeks high-impact and high-involvement advertising and TV is the most efficient way to change people's brand perceptions. But the advert will not be shown that often.

"We do try to do things differently, rather than carpet bombing people with our brand," he says. "We want people talking about our work."
Stephen Brook

EDIT: If you haven't seen the ad yet, you can see it on the Honda website.