We noted on here a while back that downloads of Wieden + Kennedy’s ‘Choir’ TV ad for the Honda Civic had topped 800,000. This seemed bloody good. More recent figures show that the ad has been viewed online more than three million times in just one month. Now, that’s impressive.

The huge demand crashed Honda’s servers, as the website’s bandwidth couldn’t cope with the number of downloads. This problem has now been solved by hosting the Choir clip on a separate server.

The Choir ad also broke into the Top 50 Apple iTunes downloads chart, after we produced a version of the advert in iPod Video format.

As well as the ad, there’s also a Civic microsite on www.honda.co.uk that allows visitors to explore a 3D model of the new car and view video content. The microsite had a record 679,000 unique visitors during the same reporting period. This led to Honda’s highest level of test drive bookings ever. And, for those who ask, ‘But what about the sales?’ the Civic was the UK’s second best selling car (after Ford Focus) in its sector at retail in January.

Blimey. A lot of people just joined us. I guess we must be growing fast. This is Rob Kendall. He’s here on loan from the Portland office, working in our studio. It’s the first time he’s ever visited the UK. Culture shock! Meanwhile, Beanie, one of our designers, is visiting Portland. Hey, Beanie, if you’re reading this, let us know what you’re up to.
W+K, at 6 offices and a few hundred people worldwide, is a relatively small network. We try to arrange transfers and exchanges like this to spread the culture virus round the network and cross-pollinate thinking. It’s not always easy to sort them out so we’re glad this one has come off. Hopefully Rob, Beanie, Portland and London will all learn new stuff and think differently about what we do as a result.