For the Honda Brand, a Cinematic Stroke

WITH the automotive industry battling an economic downturn, is it the right time for a carmaker to introduce another installment in a corporate image campaign that carries the theme, “The power of dreams”?

The American Honda Motor Company believes so, bringing out this week three short films — a k a long commercials — to be watched online. The so-called webisodes, each about seven minutes, will be available, starting on Monday, at a Honda Web site (dreams.honda.com), under the rubric of the “Dream the Impossible documentary series.”

Commercials that will serve as trailers for the short films, meant to drive traffic to the Web site, are to appear on ABC.com, CBS.com, hulu.com and NBC.com. There will also be ads on sites devoted to news, technology and other topics; they include CNN.com, time.com, wired.com and yahoo.com.

The “power of dreams” campaign, which started in September 2007, and the webisodes are created by RPA, the longtime agency of American Honda Motor, in Santa Monica, Calif.

One webisode is scheduled be shown at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where American Honda Motor is the automotive sponsor. Plans call for the short to run before “Mary and Max,” which is to be the first movie screened at the festival.

Attendees at the festival, in Park City, Utah, from Thursday through Jan. 25, may be treated to a ride in one of 12 new Insight hybrid small hatchbacks being supplied by American Honda Motor. Another new Honda, the FCX Clarity — a fuel-cell car the company is offering for lease in California — is to be on display at the festival. The campaign is emblematic of efforts by consumer marketers to maintain their advertising presence despite the ravages of the recession. Honda sales in the United States fell 34.7 percent in December compared with the same month of 2007; for all of 2008 they declined 8 percent compared with the previous year.

The Honda ads are particularly interesting because campaigns like it — seeking to burnish a longstanding corporate image, rather than sell products in the short run — are often the first casualties when consumers slow or stop spending.

“This is not a ‘Go out and buy a Honda’ campaign,” acknowledged Barbara Ponce, manager for corporate advertising at American Honda Motor in Torrance, Calif., part of the Honda Motor Company of Japan. Rather, she added, it is “communicating with our customers about what our brand stands for.”

“As we revisit our strategies in tough times, we have to ask the tough questions,” Ms. Ponce said. “In these economic times, everything becomes challenged.”

Still, she said, “we stayed the course” on the campaign, which the company began considering in the spring.

“Consumers are going back to the basics, back to foundations, values,” Ms. Ponce said, “and this campaign is focused on our values as a company, the people who make up what Honda is about.”

The webisodes, directed by Derek Cianfrance, are low-key in their promotion of Honda and are polished and absorbing enough to make a viewer (almost) forget they are sponsored shorts, and part of the trend toward branded entertainment.

The webisodes feature employees of American Honda Motor in realms like engineering, design and safety, along with executives like Takeo Fukui, president and chief executive at Honda Motor, the parent company. Some more recognizable names also appear in the shorts, among them Danica Patrick, who races Honda cars; the actor and screenwriter Christopher Guest, who drives an FCX Clarity; and Orson Scott Card, the science fiction author.

One webisode, “Mobility 2088,” imagines how people may get around eight decades from now. A speaker wonders how good an idea jetpacks would be if “all the idiots on the road today” filled the skies.

A second short, “Failure: the Secret to Success,” describes how setbacks can sometimes lead to achievement. Examples include the problem-plagued engines that Honda supplied for race cars in 1994, which were replaced with better ones a year later, and an orange color for the Honda Civic that dealers and consumers deemed “hideous”; the color subsequently found favor, when it was offered on the Honda Element.

A third webisode is devoted to what is described as a Honda corporate philosophy in the think-outside-the-box vein. Speakers discuss how better ideas are generated when there is no safety net, using Japanese metaphors like “kick out the ladder” — the name of the episode — or “take the ladder away and set fire to it.”

One speaker offers a frank opinion of those expressions. “Maybe it sounds better in Japanese,” he says.

The goal in producing the shorts was to convey some of the “honesty and authenticity” with which employees of American Honda Motor are imbued, said Todd Carey, vice president and associate creative director at RPA, who worked on the campaign with Curt Johnson, vice president and creative director.“I can’t really speak about the economic factors” involved in deciding to proceed with the campaign, Mr. Carey said, “but there’s an overwhelming sense of optimism that comes out of these films,” which may connect with consumers depressed by all the news about the recession.

“It’s not advertising optimism,” Mr. Carey said. “It’s authentic documentary-film optimism.”

The Honda sponsorship of the Sundance festival was arranged with the Sundance Institute by Evan Shapiro, president of the Sundance Channel and IFC TV, part of the Rainbow Entertainment Services division of the Cablevision Systems Corporation.

“Honda and the automotive business are under pressure,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The question is, how do you prepare for the other side of the recession?” The answer is a campaign like this, he said, which “isn’t some spots disguised as shorts” but rather entertainment that is “content driven.”

Although Ms. Ponce declined to discuss the budget for the campaign, she said the webisodes cost “70 percent of the cost to produce a regular 30-second TV spot.” That would mean a sum in the recession-friendly range of $200,000 to $300,000.

A Less Exuberant Show, but a More Rational One

DETROIT is reeling. Its automakers teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, the unemployment rate hovers around double digits, its flamboyant former mayor is in jail. Houses are advertised for as little as $1 and its professional football team just finished with a 0-16 record, an N.F.L. first for regular-season play.

But it is showtime again in Motown, so the embattled city is doing its best to affect a festive atmosphere for thousands of journalists and industry insiders arriving for the North American International Auto Show. Despite the hospitality — and exciting prospects for the electrification of America’s vehicle fleet — it seems likely this will be the most subdued Detroit show in decades. A celebration of the automobile that was optimistic and bombastic in normal times may end up feeling more like a wake for a once-thriving industry.

“The 2009 N.A.I.A.S. will be a pretty gloomy affair — low key, attendance down by journalists, analysts and major brands, glitz definitely down,” George Peterson, president of AutoPacific, a market research firm in Tustin, Calif., wrote in an e-mail message. This year, he added, automakers will try to appear prudent — not blazing through marketing dollars. Mr. Peterson said he thought Detroit’s long-running industry showcase would retreat to its more modest, pre-1989 roots, before it took on the role (and name) of being North America’s auto show. That would turn the clock back to when automakers and dealerships catered more to hometown tire-kickers than to globe-trotting jet-setters.

Contrasts between last year’s raucous gathering and this year’s leaner get-together are likely to be stark. In 2008, to lend some cowboy swagger to its redesigned Dodge Ram pickup, Chrysler staged a cattle drive of 120 Texas Longhorns through downtown streets.

And for the debut last year of its new F-150 pickup, Ford had a noisy pyrotechnic show starring the country singer Toby Keith. At a high-decibel kickoff party and fashion show called GM Style, Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, tried to dance with General Motors’ vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz.

In 2009 no one should expect stampedes, fireworks or a hip-hopping mayor. (Last October, Mr. Kilpatrick began serving a 120-day jail sentence after pleading guilty to charges of obstruction of justice and assault.) The show’s organizers say that about 20 new car and truck models will make their global debuts, far fewer than in recent years. Combined with another two dozen or so vehicles that were previously shown outside North America, the Detroit unveilings are expected to be — for the most part — green-tinged, low-key and frill-free.

Three days of media previews begin Sunday, to be followed by two days of industry-only attendance, and then nine days for the public.

Yet the target audience for this show’s press days isn’t so much those who will be in Cobo Center. Rather, the automakers will be playing to the Washington lawmakers who recently threw a financial lifeline to Chrysler and General Motors in the form of emergency loans. Congress will no doubt be watching how this taxpayer money is being used.

Ford, G.M., Honda and Toyota will be among those showing new hybrid, electric and alternative-fuel vehicles, emphasizing sustainability and environmental sensitivity. Models that celebrate extreme horsepower, avant-garde styling and macho attitude are likely be played down and rolled out with little or no fanfare.

In a development unprecedented in recent memory, some major manufacturers — including Nissan, Infiniti, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Land Rover, Porsche, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce — have chosen to skip the show altogether. They cited a desire to spend their promotional dollars at events that they say are aimed more directly at their customers.

Mercedes-Benz is saving the cost of a press conference for its new E-Class sedan by unveiling the car off-site, rather than inside the convention center, the night before the press previews begin. The E-Class will not be displayed at the auto show, although new fuel-saving technologies in three concept vehicles will be. BMW will have its new Z4 sports car here in a display area less grand than originally planned. G.M. was hoping to save more than $1 million just by switching its display area’s flooring to carpeting instead of wood and tile.

In recent years, the economic impact of the two weeks of the auto show on the Detroit metro area was estimated by the show organizers to be as much as $580 million. This year, the estimates have been scaled back to less than $350 million.

With the stagecraft toned down this year, the cars will become the focus of attention. G.M. and Ford each plan six introductions, including important new models like the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac SRX, Lincoln MKT and Ford Taurus. Chrysler is introducing three prototype electric vehicles, including the Dodge Circuit EV sports car. Toyota has two new hybrid electric introductions here as well as the tiny FT-EV.

There will also be nine new designs from Chinese manufacturers, who were for the first time allotted space on the main show floor — previously they were relegated to Cobo’s basement or entry hallways — even though their cars are not yet sold in the United States.

Overseas-based automakers continue to gain not only floor space at this show, but market share as well. The combined United States market share of Ford, G.M. and Chrysler fell to 47.5 percent last year, from 51 percent in 2007, according to Autodata, an industry analysis firm, which noted that this was the first time the Detroit Three had fallen below 50 percent. Asian brands accounted for 44.6 percent of the sales in the American market last year, and European brands for 7.8 percent.

But many of these so-called foreign automakers, like Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Hyundai, produce significant numbers of vehicles in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In that sense, they are all a part of the American auto industry, and all are affected by the problems of the industry and the economy — a reality that will be reflected in their show displays.

2009 Audi A4 Sedan

The newly redesigned 2009 Audi A4 Sedan features a more squat stance and a sportier overall appearance than did last year's model. The A4 is Audi's smallest sedan model, but it is continuing to grow. In fact, it is only 1.3 inches shorter in its wheelbase than is the Audi A6. That's a full 6 inches longer than the wheelbase on the 2008 Audi A4. It's also two inches wider and, including theToyota Avalon, is the largest vehicle in its class. These dimensional increases grant the 2009 A4 enhanced levels of road-gripping performance and an elevated confidence range as well.

MSRPs for the Audi A4 range from $30,700 up to $48,800 and it comes with an impressive 48-month, 50,000-mile standard warranty. Fuel economy ratings make you feel good delivering 30 mpg on the highways and 23 mpg in the cities. It shares its underpinnings with the soon-to-come A5 and S5. Its lines are expertly-sculpted and it features a new front end that is noticeably aggressive. There are also catchy rows of running lights under each headlight. The longer wheelbase is accentuated with a shorter front overhand to make the car appear less long than it actually is. There has also been a 10 percent decrease in body weight over last year's model due mainly to the use of "ultra-high-strength steel".

On the inside, the 2009 A4 by Audi is all class. It features almost Lexus-grade materials and design standards. The seats are crafted from black leather and make a bold statement of elegance when matched with the black door panels. Aluminum accents are placed throughout to complete the pricey look and feel. As for cabin dimensions, they have grown in every respect as well. The seats offer considerably more comfort than did the 2008 ones and the trunk volume has increased by 3.6 cubic feet to 17 cf. The 14-speaker Bang and Olufsen 6-CD, iPod-enabled stereo system also has no problem getting your attention.

Enhanced safety features, both standard and optional continue to keep Audi in the forefront of the industry as a company that cares a lot about you and your family. There are 6 airbags standard and an option to purchase rear-side airbags as well. Engine-wise, the Audi A4 does not fool around; the stock engine pumps out 265 horses from its 3.2L V6/ZF 6-speed transmission combo. It will take you from 0 to 60 mph in only 6.2 seconds. Direct fuel injection and a 2-staged valve lifting system have created a 6 percent increase in fuel efficiency over last year's model. Reduced bodily weight has also lowered the drag coefficient from 0.31 to 0.29 Cod. Even the new air conditioner offers a ten percent power increase while simultaneously requiring roughly 20 percent less fuel to operate it.

Not surprisingly, the 2009 Audi A4 Sedan is a hot seller and continues to build solid consumer loyalty for the auto giant. The A4 over delivers in almost every respect imaginable. Power, safety, comfort, style, performance and above-average fuel economy make the Audi A4 well worth the price.

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