The Observer reported yesterday that the jingle from the Honda ad "grrr", which includes the line 'Can hate be good? Can hate be something we don't hate?', could be released as a single, after generating a huge amount of interest.
Created by Wieden & Kennedy, the animated sequence tells the story of how Honda came to design a better diesel engine. It eschews the "money shots" typical of the majority of car advertising and is set in a brightly coloured world, populated by talking rabbits, flowers and rainbows.
The song was written by Michael Russoff, who created the ad along with Sean Thompson and Richard Russell. The Observer reports that W&K is now considering what to do with the jingle, which currently appears on radio and television. It owns the copyright but has an agreement that it will only be used to further the commercial interests of Honda.
Keillor has lent his voice to a series of Honda ads, including the award-winning "cog" and another spot called "OK factory". But the "grrr" spot is the first time that the gravely voiced presenter has been asked to sing.
If the jingle is released as a single, it will be following in a tradition dating back to the early 1970s when Coca-Cola launched the "I'd like to teach the world to sing" campaign. The song was written purely as a jingle, but people loved it so much that it was rushed out as a full-length single by the New Seekers.
More usually, however, it is the revival of an older hit that can push the song back into the charts, such as Marvin Gaye's 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine', revived by the Levi's laundrette ad starring Nick Kamen; and the Dandy Warhol's 'Bohemian like You', which charted after appearing in a Vodafone ad.
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