Honda Joy of Problems and how it got there
After i wrote about the it in an earlier post, I asked a couple of the agencies involved in the Honda Joy of Problems campaign and the Problem Playground website if they would answer some questions by email. W&K, who did the main ATL/idea stuff answered questions via Neil, who also blogs at the company site Welcome to Optimism. Collective London are the digital agency of record and Dan answered questions from them; they blog at Collective They also have a nice ‘people’ page which I’d link to but it’s all in flash and no deep linking possible. The Honda site has the same issue as well on the surface- I can’t point you to the bits I like on the site.
Overall, I do like the site. There’s fun puzzles all mixed well with product information - they are extremely well integrated into the whole picture. It reflects the poster/print ads and the TV ad. (Although, I do have to admit to being a bit put off by the TV as it reminds me too much of those team building days that work makes you go on, spending time solving random puzzles like navigating a course blindfolded with your partner not allowed to speak or touch you to guide you) The whole campaign fits together, all building up different layers, the type of stuff I love. I’ve seen TV, print, outdoors (the one above was taken at Putney station) and display ads.. I was going to say that they’ve also done some different things, such as sponsoring sections on Boing Boing, but this appears to be a US led deal which has little to do with the UK campaign. You can however see that everything is done under the ‘ the power of dreams’ logo of which ‘joy of problems is a sub-set.
Ao, over to the emails. Instead of mixing the answers, I’ll just add the two responses consecutively. First up is Neil from W&K.
Q: Could you go into the motivations for building a site/campaign like Joy of Problems? Were there any objectives you can share?
The environment is everywhere these days (well, it always has been, but you know what I mean). And everyone’s promoting their green credentials. Even people like Tesco are boning up on being green. So there’s an expectation that companies should be / are green these days. And they’re all talking about it. My God are they talking about it. But there’s also cynicism about certain companies when they talk green.
Obviously Honda is a car company. And they are the largest engine manufacturer in the world. But of all the car companies out there, Honda are probably the ones who are more environmentally minded than the others. And have been since Soichiro Honda created a four-stroke engine because 2-stroke released more pollution into the water that was used to grow rice, and consumed by people. In 1992 they issued a statement detailing their commitment to the environment. The headline statement was, “Honda will pursue challenging goals for the conservation of the environment”. The fact that they do something for the environment is not different or unique. But how they go about it is interesting. They apply their curiosity, creativity and innovation into looking at the huge number of ways in which they can help the environment. And apply their knowledge in ways which may not seem obvious at first. Particularly for a car company.
So the environment gives Honda chance to talk about how they look at the world. Which is an interesting way of looking at the world. It’s looking around them at the world we live in and asking the question, “What can we do here to make things better?” It’s about them noticing ways in which they can do things to improve the situation we are all currently in no matter how small, or seemingly odd. It’s about Honda looking beyond what most people know them for – their cars and bikes – and asking what they can do, applying their creativity and abilities to improve the world we live in. This is the area from which came the germ of the thought that there is a joy in using ingenuity to solve puzzles and problems.
Q: I’ve seen a few bad reactions for the teaser part of the campaign, in effect charging you with putting up an unfinished site. It’s been made clear that this was part of the strategy. Were there any problems in convincing your colleagues/the client to do it this way?
No, this was all agreed as part of the strategy.
Q: Was this treated as an integrated programme, with all elements being developed together, or was it the common case of TV/print being developed ahead and digital playing catch up?
It was done as a fully integrated campaign with all elements developed in parallel. That’s the way we always try to work.
Q: What other elements are out there now? I’ve seen posters and print and site. Are you running online ads/SEM?
There’s a lot more to come, including TV, online, retail and more. Watch this space!
Q: Did you consider not providing a prize for the jigsaw phase and just running with the puzzle?
It was considered but decided in the end that an incentive would help drive trial.
Q: Did the client have pre-conceived metrics that the elements were built to meet? Did you?
We have some levels of response that we expect to achieve based on previous campaigns. We’ve been extremely successful in the past at using ATL media to ’start the conversation’ and drive people to visit the website, download further material, book test drives, and ultimately buy cars. (Honda sales up 17% YOY vs market up 4%)
Q: Were there any influences that you’d like to share?
There were lots. Many to do with childhood memories of games and puzzles.
Q: Do you have a favourite product campaign (non-entertaiment) that has caught your eye that is also playing in the puzzle/treasure hunt/ARG area?
The only one that I can think of off the top of my head was that Volvo ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ promotion but that was pretty dreadful. And the connection between Volvo and pirates seemed somewhat tenuous.
Q: Are you coming out with a book/video in the same vein as ‘Joy of Sex’ :)
We have done a little book as part of the campaign. It will be distributed through dealerships and from the website. But it does not include illustrations of a beardy man penetrating a hippy lady.
And now over to Dan, who had pretty much the same set of questions.
Q: Could you go into the motivations for building a site/campaign like Joy of Problems? Were there any objectives you can share?
For the website our objective was to immerse people in Honda’s world of problem solving and use puzzle devices - from Rubik’s cubes to slider puzzles - in order to deliver the stories of Honda’s engineering innovations in a playful and enjoyable way. Primarily this is a brand site.
The secondary objective was to deliver Civic Hybrid leads through brochure requests, dealer searches and test drive booking - all of which you can do very easily and without leaving the experience.
Jonny Freeman, Honda’s Digital Marketing Manager, puts it this way, "Digital provides us with an ideal opportunity to bring the whole notion of problem solving to life, and to demonstrate Honda’s long term commitment - stretching back 50 years - to creating innovative products with less impact on the environment."
(Dan provided a link to a video on the making of the TV ad, which takes you to a specific section of the site. Interestingly this is a deep link in the flash site, but not one that appears to be discoverable. You can also download it if you want.)
It’s also important to point out that we didn’t want to create a site full of brain teasers and puzzles per se. The puzzles are purposefully simple and provide an engaging way to deliver content about Honda - they aren’t designed to be a playful diversion from content.
Q: I’ve seen a few bad reactions for the teaser part of the campaign, in effect charging you with putting up an unfinished site. It’s been made clear that this was part of the strategy. Were there any problems in convincing your colleagues/the client to do it this way?
There has been some misunderstanding about the purpose of the teaser campaign. The teaser campaign led the campaign and broke 3 weeks before the TV. The initial activity was designed to focus purely on delivering leads for the Hybrid. So at this stage we didn’t want to highlight the other products and innovations that would form much of the content for the larger site. Also, the Honda character animations (that are central to the full site) are a direct reference to the people featured in the TV ad. To have revealed these before the ad broke would have both stolen some of the ad’s thunder and probably confused visitors as to what they were a reference to!
Rather than simply deliver a small teaser site, we decided to use the jigsaw mechanic as an appropriate yet novel way of weaving in the notion of collaborative problem solving (which the ad is all about). The site is unfinished not because we’d missed our deadline but because we wanted to show the bigger site that is coming soon and give users the chance to ’solve it’. Visitors could also sign up to Honda’s mailing list to learn about future product innovations, particularly Honda’s future ‘green’ products which will be going on sale in the UK.
Q: Was this treated as an integrated programme, how did you work with the other agencies involved? How did you get involved?
The campaign is part of an integrated programme of activity involving ATL, BTL and online. To ensure consistency in execution and campaign alignment, our relationship with the other agencies involved has been very much a partnership. We worked very closely with W+K London and their creative team. You can find out how we collaborated with W+K London on the last Honda integrated campaign on our blog here: http://collectivelondon.blogspot.com/2007/11/everyone-wants-to-adopt-integrated.html
Our top tips for collaborating well are:
1. Think about why you are doing something (goals).
2. Have some brave ideas.
3. Test those ideas against your goals.
4. Talk to each other, a lot.
5. Accept that you won’t always see eye to eye, so make sure there is someone you respect to mediate.
6. Talk to each other again.
7. Have some more brave ideas.
8. Clients - give your key agencies shared financial incentives.
9. Agencies - think about the cultures of your agencies - how can you facilitate working and communication together better or more easily?
10. Be honest and challenge each other.
11. Invite and respond positively to honest feedback.
12. Keep going back to those goals - will what you are doing deliver on them?
13. And finally. do what you are good at. If you have all the above right, your agencies should just need to do what they are good at, be it a media plan or a website. That’s the easy bit.
(RC: I love this list and this attitude. Integration and collaboration is something I’m passionate about)
As far as how we got involved, we started meetings with W+K once they had developed an initial TV script idea - we then worked with them on developing the digital angle over several months.
Q: What other elements are out there now? . Are you running online ads/SEM?
The site has supplementary SEO pages and paid search is an integral part of driving traffic to site. Online ads broke on Jan 14th with a second phase of creative which launched on the 4th Feb. Online media is booked for 3 months.
There are online pushes on loads of different UK portals - Homepage takeovers on Yahoo, Guardian, AOL, independent, FT, multimap, Up My Street and ITV. Screengrabs of the Guardian ads here - featuring puzzles from the Problem Playground microsite. This [The Independent] has rich media online puzzle ads. There is also online advertorial on independent.co.uk, Plus sponsorship of the Uk Yahoo Answers portal, as it’s a fit with Problem Playground’s problem solving idea. An example question from Honda: "How do you think Britain’s energy policies could be made more effective in curbing emissions?" There’s a Yahoo desktop widget in the pipeline too
Q: Did you consider not providing a prize for the jigsaw phase and just running with the puzzle? How did it end up doing with the prize? Do you think that drove additional traffic?
We debated not including a prize but the incentive was seen as an additional driver to encourage entry and giving away a Hybrid makes sense considered the over-arching environmental message. We hope to re-use the puzzle mechanic in phase 2 of the site development.
To be honest, if we hadn’t had the Hybrid content during the teaser phase, I think we may well have had no prize draw mechanic and instead gone for ‘pure intrigue’ - essentially putting a site up that users would build from the ground up. But giving that content time to breathe on its own was critical to meeting our deliverables on Civic, so the prize draw mechanic made sense.
Q Did the client have pre-conceived metrics that the elements were built to meet? Did you?
In terms of metrics, unfortunately we can’t share these as the targets we’ve been set encompass the overall campaign and we’ve not completed our time frames for evaluating results but initial indications have been encouraging.
By the way, the site’s been featured on the CWA, Design Licks and WDA awards websites - more on our blog - www.collectivelondon.blogspot.com
Q: Were there any influences that you’d like to share?
Generally as a piece the visual architecture of the site was composed to reference the abstract paintings from the likes of Mondrian, and Theo van Doesburg. We really liked the idea of creating compositions within compositions keeping an element of exploration and discovery for the users. A loose structure was based around three environmental forces, earth, water, and sun with colours appropriate to each section. We had a lot of fun with the colour wheel; we deliberately restricted ourselves to perhaps two colours and a complimentary colour per sections to help retain its graphical boldness. We looked into geometric shapes and patterns to embellish the site taking reference from more contemporary abstract artists such as Klaus Haapaniemi, Marko D, and Jovi Schnell. Each section has a slightly different tone which influences the overall style of assets used, softer curves in the water section contrasting the sharp angles of the sun section.
Q: Do you have a favourite product campaign (non-entertainment) that has caught your eye that is also playing in the puzzle/treasure hunt/ARG area?
All the Stella Artois digital campaign work being produced is great stuff, great interactive elements which really involve the user. The narratives that run through the ‘discover the world in 1366’ are carefully considered and really give an extra dimension and depth to the brand. The puzzle site http://www.ledefi-stellaartois.com/ was really enjoyable; Just the right learning curve with a high quality execution.
Tags: honda, joy of problems, power of dreamsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Advertising Agencies, Competition, Fun and Games, Integrated and Transmedia Marketing
1 opinion for Honda Joy of Problems and how it got there
Ad-Supported Gaming « Digital Worlds - Interactive Media and Game Design
Oct 27, 2008 at 11:28 am
[…] A good example of a game developed as part of a wider campaign is the Honda Problem Playground website. The rationale behind the website - and its role in the campaign - is described here: Honda Joy of Problems and how it got there. […]
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