This one is for all those readers who say we never post any negative feedback on here:

I have just discovered who is responsible for those annoying Honda commercials.

I am an ordinary member of the public with no power in the media industry but I feel someone should speak out against this tirade of tediously long, irritating, ingratiating, psycho-tapped commercialism.

Wieden + Kennedy’s former planning director, Russell Davies, has been at the TED conference in California.

TED is an invitation-only event where the world’s leading thinkers and doers gather for inspiration and insight. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. In fact, the event is broader still, showcasing ideas that matter in any discipline. Attendees have called it "The ultimate brain spa," and "A four-day journey into the future." The audience — CEOs and scientists, producers and policy makers — is almost as extraordinary as the speakers, who have included Bill Gates, Quincy Jones, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, and Bono.

The people from TED contacted us to see if they could show some of our Honda ads at the conference. June Cohen of TED said, ‘The principles behind the campaigns (Inspiration; innovation; the power of dreams) match so perfectly with the spirit of TED and the TEDPrize, in particular.’

So, we sent the ads over.

Russell writes:

So I’m not sure how bloggable this is but they did show the ads at the TED conference.

Which means that you can now definitely state that Al Gore and Meg Ryan have seen OK Factory, Choir and Impossible Dream. And so have lots of Nobel Prize winners and billionaires, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

The ads obviously went down well, but probably the most rewarding thing for you guys is that Lexus sponsored the event (presumably at huge expense) and then had to sit and watch all these Honda ads being shown for no money.

That’s the power of good ads.