Honda Revives Iconic Strapline with Launch of Animated Campaign

Digitas UK has created an animated film showing a variety of Honda-powered vehicles and machines racing against each other. It aims to promote Honda’s leading role in Formula One, following the successful launch of its new partnership with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing and its existing partnership with Scuderia Toro Rosso.

The high-octane 60, 30 & 15 second films will run across Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. 

The film highlights Honda Racing’s new strategic position, “Powered by Honda”, reviving the strapline made famous on the F1 cars that won so many races and championships between 1988 and 1992. The stylised film shows iconic Honda vehicles – performance cars, motorbikes, lawn mowers, speedboats and even an aircraft – all of which share being powered by Honda power units – participating in a race on an F1 racetrack. At the end of the animated sequence, they all morph back into Red Bull and Toro Rosso F1 cars and the film switches to real footage of the cars on a track.

Peter Drake, executive creative director at Digitas UK, added: “Using animation gave us the freedom to create an extraordinary imaginary race sequence to showcase Honda’s unique attitude. Then revealing the 2019 Honda-powered F1 cars in live action unequivocally brings the ‘Powered by Honda’ line to life.”