Visited the  Motorshow to check out what was going on and see how the stand of our client Honda compares to others. (Bizarrely, the Motorshow website says that Honda are presenting the ‘world debut’ of the new Civic, a car that has been on the streets for several months now. However, they do have previews of the new Legend and the new Civic Type R.)

Overriding impression of the show was that all the stands look very much the same. There’s little attempt by any manufacturer to provide any kind of ‘brand experience’. (Apologies for the use of that phrase.) They all have a big illuminated logo you can spot from far away…

They all have a selection of highly polished, fairly similar looking cars sparkling under the lights, some promotional girls in various degrees of embarrassing costume, a vehicle which you can look at but not touch – ‘concept’ model, vintage classic or racing car…

…and they all have some interactive screens and display stuff. I’m sure there are many practical reasons why all the stands are like this but perhaps all this homogeneity gives an opportunity for stand out and brand differentiation. It can’t be right that the Jaguar stand looks pretty much identical to the Kia stand. Bizarrely, one of the things all the car manufacturers seem to be keen to dress their stand with is…bicycles:

Are we really expected to believe that the average Hummer driver would rather be cycling?

On the Ford stand there was for some reason a bloke making ice sculptures. Of cars? Nope. Bicycles.

The Honda stand is backed by a large display of material from our Impossible Dream print campaign, which gives some context for the vehicles on show.

Full marks to the chap on the Honda stand who, when I asked him what all this Power of Dreams nonsense was about, gave me a brief and cogent explanation of the the brand’s heritage and philosophy. He also told me it was the most inspiring and passionate company he’d ever worked for.