Naresh Ramchandani, writing in yesterday’s Guardian, finds Wieden + Kennedy’s new ad for the Honda Civic ‘a huge disappointment’. Damn. He says it’s ‘one of the better ads on telly. But by Honda’s high standards it’s not good enough.’ 

The benchmark he’s using to judge us is a pretty high one. ‘Honda’s unprecedented ad consistency was reminiscent of Pixar’s unprecedented movie consistency.’ The Accord ‘Cog’ spot was our Toy Story, the Civic ‘Everyday’ spot was our Bug’s Life, the FRV ‘Circles’ campaign was our Finding Nemo and the diesel ‘Grrr’ spot was ‘an all-guns-blazing peak like Monsters Inc. or The Incredibles.’

Now, it’s never great to be judged wanting. But if we are going to be judged wanting, it’s flattering to be compared to Pixar, rather than, say, McCann. Now we know what we have to beat to be the best.

Naresh goes on to compare our production budgets to Pixar and remarks that ‘Pixar would never invest that production budget on a script written in four or five weeks by a couple of creatives who, excuse the parody, were probably revising a couple of radio ads for Abbey and shooting a poster for Tampax at the same time.’ I have to correct him on this misapprehension. ‘Choir’ took nearly a year’s worth of dedicated work by a large team of people. I wish we could do it quicker with fewer people – it would make the agency a hell of a lot more profitable if we could – but it doesn’t seem to work that way.

I’m also not sure that I agree with the article’s contention that the Honda campaign has given hope to old school idealists that ‘you could scrap all that (new media) nonsense and make an old-fashioned blockbuster commercial and it would still cut through the way it used to.’

We believe that the non-traditional use of media, such as inserting DVDs with the ads on into national press, circulating ads virally, using TV to drive people to web content and making films available to download online, has been key to the success of our work for Honda. They simply don’t have the budget to outshout their competition via an ‘old-fashioned blockbuster’ TV campaign. We have to create content that’s good enough for people to want to seek it out. Over 800,000 downloads of ‘Choir’ from Honda’s website (see earlier ‘Heavy Traffic’ post) suggests that this is working.

Anyway, watch out, Pixar. We may have screwed up on ‘Choir’, but we’ll get you next time.

Cheryl Rogers is one of our account directors, currently on secondment to W+K Shanghai. Here’s her latest news:

I’m feeling pretty lucky to have had 2 New Year’s celebrations inside of a month and in true Chinese spirit think this must represent a very lucky and prosperous year ahead for me!

Thought I’d write an update on a few things that have been happening lately…

Chinese New Year

It didn’t go off with a bang. It went off with 18 million bangs over about 6 hours on New Year’s Eve and to get a good view we went to the highest bar in the world to watch. So from the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt on Pudong, we did the civilized thing until the rising smoke from the city below made us go down to the water to get amongst the action. It was truly mental. A lasting roar could be heard across the city and the smoke was so intense that by the end of the night we couldn’t see 100m down the road. Fireworks aren’t done in singular here, they’re let off in boxes, put in the middle of the street that taxi drivers swerve around. Great fun.

The next day we went down to some traditional gardens in the middle of the city to put our wishes on a tree that has all its leaves painted gold. I think every Chinese person in Shanghai was also there to do the same thing!

New Year’s lasts for a week over here, so it’s fireworks every morning and night, with the 5th night being the proper fireworks night – bigger than NYE even. So the madness continues. We’ve got a few boxes to let off in our garden at work that night which should be fun. And dangerous.

Frank’s birthday

Frank Hahn is one of the creative directors here and it was his birthday two weeks ago. He’s German so we had German beer, sauerkraut, sausages and mash potatoes in the dining room one evening. We ate all of the above (not the beer) with chopsticks.

Christin’s birthday

Christin Spagnoli is over here on loan from the studio in Portland and it was her birthday on Friday, we dressed up her desk in pink fur for the day and made sure she had some cupcakes for a taste of home. She said it made her feel just like Elle Woods.

Interesting things/ Not-so-interesting things

This year is Year of the Dog. If your sign is the dog you must own and wear at least one piece of red underwear this year. There are 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, and their order in the calendar was decided by a race amongst them to find out who was the fastest. The only animal not to get his own year was the cat, who didn’t wake up in time for the race because the rat let him sleep in and then took his place. (And that’s why cats hate rats).

Everyone eats at dumplings at New Year’s and making them is a family occasion. We have a kitchen in the office and someone came in on Friday to make us dumplings – so good. You’re supposed to eat fish on New Year’s day because they symbolize the abundance and prosperity that you’ll then receive throughout the year.

Loud noises scare off evil spirits – hence 18 million people letting off fireworks – and the person with the loudest fireworks will be the luckiest in the coming year. Can’t wait for Thursday!

Everyone’s got the week off this week so it’s just us westerners in the office. It’s like the UN in here – we’ve had people from W+K Tokyo, Portland, New York and London here in recent weeks and more recruits arrived today to help out in the studio.

It’s getting warmer and the days of -6 seem to be behind us.

After being turfed out of a taxi by a driver who couldn’t understand me, I have finally progressed to saying a few things in Chinese that can almost be understood.

Gong xi fa sai!

Cheryl