Better Shared Than Stolen

Leo Burnett Milan bagged the 2007 Grand Clio for TV/Cinema for its Ariston TV/C last week, whose execution somehow I find alarmingly similar to a storyline for Honda CR-V conceived back in 2005 by my former hotshot Creative team, Irwan Fakhruddin (Octocomm Asia) and Freiza Respatiyanto (Matari), during our tenure in our former office, ahem, Leo Burnett Jakarta. The difference is, ours has never been executed, yet.

Therefore, since it is very unlikely that the storyline will ever see the light of day again (because we no longer work for the Honda account, none of us still works at Leo Burnett Jakarta, and even the Honda account is no longer with Leo Burnett Jakarta), not to mention that comparisons to that award-winning Ariston commercial will drown us alive should it get produced and aired, we choose to share it with all of you right here, right now. (Mamen, I believe you’d allow me to do this.)

At least, if indeed it got produced somehow, or should someone somewhere come up with similar idea and execute his/her version, the eternal argument of Been Done will have a chronological explanation attached to it.

Am not saying that we thought of this kind of execution before the Milanese guys did, because for that I’d argue that Great Minds Think Alike ha ha. Or probably it’s simply a Burnetter thing. At the end of the day, they got it produced, we didn't.

Client: PT Honda Prospect Motor

Product: New Honda CR-V (thematic 2006 campaign)

Objective: position New Honda CR-V as the perfect SUV for urban life rather than for the great outdoors which all the others claimed to be.

Proposition: The great outdoors is actually in.

Title: Urban Jungle

Description:
One sunny morning we see the New Honda CR-V leaves a house which is actually a cave, crawling thru the slow but chaotic traffic of a sprawling metropolitan jungle. Even though the vehicle is surrounded by concrete, steel, rubber and asphalt during its commute, slowly we begin to see a pattern and resemblances in everything around it. Dump trucks lining up slowly crossing an intersection like a small family of pachyderm, a fleet of motorcycles zigzagging across lanes indifferent to gazelles, yellow taxis tailgating on Vespas like cheetahs pouncing on hapless calves, humans acting akin to chimpanzees frantically trying to hail the microbuses which are just like their wildebeest. And there are the telephone poles and the traffic lights sprouting everywhere alike to trunks of the densest forest in Borneo, amidst the high rises of office buildings, plunging entrances of subway stations and underpasses similar to its hills and steep valleys. A huge airplane silently passing by way up in the sky, not unlike an eagle stalking its prey from above, while news choppers buzzing like dragonflies just over our huge concrete garden. The more we observe it, the more we realize that actually the jungle is already around us, and it started the moment we left the calmness of our driveway. Just outside the comfort of the cabin of New Honda CR-V.

All this, over the soothing tune of Telepopmusik’s Breathe.

Directed by Frank Budgen (I wish).

But now that Ariston had beaten this type of execution to the award shows, there goes our dream of a Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix. So if anyone out there would love to produce this storyline and post it on YouTube, please do so (how can we resist the power of the Consumer Generated Anything). Also if any advertising agency out there would like to borrow this idea and produce this storyline, we’re fine with Joe Pytka, Traktor or Michel Gondry (if Mr. Budgen is unavailable). Just make sure that you’d fly the three of us for the shoot (plus per diems). We promise we’d be very quiet on the set the whole time.

The idea is still a crap to some people anyway.