‘The two minute Gold award winning ad, which follows motion transferred from a small cog thorugh a series of auto parts in near-balletic maneuvers to move an entire Honda car is “mesmeric”,’ said the judges of the Automotive News Europe advertising awards, in awarding the gold for best national TV campaign to our spot for Honda Accord.

Franz Mesmer, the inventor of mesmerism, was born in 1734. He received a good and varied education, which ended with a medical qualification at the age of 32. His dissertation was on the influence of heavenly bodies on people’s health, which he supposed to be by means of “animal gravity”.

At the age of 40 he became interested in the effects of magnets on the body and believed that he had discovered an entirely new principle of healing involving “animal magnetism”. The “animal magnetism” that he used was different from physical magnetism in that he believed that he could “magnetise” paper, glass, dogs and all manner of other substances.

He designed a wooden tub nearly five feet across, and one foot deep, filled with water, patterns of bottles and iron filings. Out of this tub projected iron rods which were held by the patients. Later he “magnetised” a tree, so that patients could be healed by holding ropes hanging from its branches.

He was unavailable for any comment on how this might relate to the Honda Accord ad.