Honda Motor Europe is unveiling its new Civic at The Frankfurt Motor Show on 13th September 2011. To support this, Wieden + Kennedy London has designed the concept for this year’s stand: ‘Many Roads To Zero Emissions’. 

The ninth generation Civic hatchback will be released for sale in 2012.  It will offer stand-out looks combined with class-leading space, and will continue to deliver peace of mind with low running costs, through Honda’s famed and unparalleled reliability. Quality and comfort levels have improved dramatically over the outgoing model. It has also been designed exclusively for Europe’s roads.

The unveiling of the new Civic is Honda’s next step in their long-standing commitment to simply being a company that society wants to exist.  Their aim is to be a business that does not cause any harm to the environment: their ultimate goal is for all their engineering to cause zero emissions.  The new Civic is just one of the brand’s many ‘roads’ towards this goal – and the stand itself, at the most famous and biggest motor show in the world, a chance to showcase all the innovative and visionary things Honda is doing to realise its dream.  It is also an opportunity for the million people who attend the show to properly spend time with the Honda brand – to interact with the innovative and interesting nature of its products and technologies. 

W+K, in collaboration with Belgian designer Sebastien Wierinck, has created a visual representation of the roads to zero emissions for the motor show.  Sebastien has designed everything from domestic furniture to commercial interior design to installations for public spaces, galleries and art festivals.  He specialises in tubes, and with his work, he manipulates them to create wonderful environments and furniture – a form of engineering and connectivity in its own right. 

For the Honda stand, he has created a series of pipes which are connected to one of the focal points: ‘The Dream House’ – a place where all of today’s technologies come together under one roof to help reduce emissions in every aspect of our lives. Sebastien has used flexible, polyethylene tubes which he has manipulated to represent the many ‘roads’ and that everything Honda does and makes is connected.  The stand is divided into sections – Hydrogen, Electric, Hybrid, Petrol and Diesel – each technology has been colour-coded and housed in a halo of tubes which integrate together to create Honda’s future vision: The Honda Dream House.  The stand focuses on the world premiere of the new Civic and supports its launch to the global motoring press and almost one million show goers.

W+K creatives Tom Seymour and David Bruno said, ‘We wanted to talk about Honda’s technology in a simple way and used the tubes to help tell the story. Each technology area was given a specific colour so that at a glance people would know that Honda has lots of different technologies in lots of different products. And each colour had a good reason, for example there are blue tubes in the Hydrogen area because the only thing that the FCX Clarity (a hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle) emits is water. And the multi-coloured Dream House combines all the colours as it represents all the technologies coming together to create Honda’s vision of zero emissions’.

Tony Davidson, Executive Creative Director, W+K said, ‘Like Honda, Wieden + Kennedy is always looking to do things that haven't been done before.  Some clients pigeon-hole their agencies, but we were given the chance to prove ourselves in an area we are not well known for. To execute Honda's Motor Show stand so that it reflects their brand values was an opportunity we didn't want to miss.’

W+K has also created a pan-European marketing campaign to support the unveiling of the new Civic which will break in three phases between now and January 2012 and will relay the journey of the Honda engineers – how they got to final design of the Civic, and the lessons learned along the way.

The first phase begins online this weekend with the launch of a destination hub on YouTube www.youtube.com/hondacivicUK the heart of the ‘The Great Unknown’ campaign.  This phase introduces the campaign idea and is car-specific: the content relates to the various improvements and enhancements of the Civic.

Yahoo! has launched a brand new product offering – ‘Your Goals’ – which delivers Barclays Premier League football fans’ weekend match highlights directly to their inboxes every Monday morning.

Yahoo! has the rights to HD-quality Premier League highlights to view online, and needed to engage with football fans in a deeper way for the 2011 – 2012 season.  Wieden + Kennedy has worked with the brand to help them target fans directly with personalized content, at a time when discussion and conversation around football are at their highest: Monday mornings – a time when Yahoo! could come to own the weekend post-mortem moments.

This new direction represents an exciting new space for Yahoo!: they now no longer compete with live broadcasters or established Saturday night pundit shows. Your Goals allows the brand to provoke conversation around the Premier League between the passionate ‘sofa fans’ – those who may not have attended a live match or had the opportunity to see the whole game on TV.

Your Goals launched on the first Monday of the season, and has already been picked up by more than 100,000 fans.  The launch is supported by an integrated campaign created by Wieden + Kennedy London that broke simultaneously to reinforce the timeliness of the product. The work, created by Darren Wright and Sidney Bosley, includes digital, escalator DEPs and DOOH and weekly press executions in the Metro.  The media and creative strategy have been woven together – media has only been bought to appear on Mondays.

Darren Wright, Creative Director, Wieden + Kennedy said, ‘The Yahoo! Your Goals service of getting your team’s goals delivered to your inbox every Monday for free is amazing for any footie fan.  We wanted to relay this clear message in a very simple way and cement Yahoo! as a brand that not only understands football, but is part of football culture’.
W+K was appointed to Yahoo!’s creative agency roster in February 2011 on a project basis to develop communications around Yahoo!’s English Premier League content.  The Your Goals campaign is the first work created by W+K to break since their appointment.