NYU Student Agency Sparkplug Creates Honda Fit Promotion

honda_fit_sparkplug.jpg

New York University student-run ad agency Sparkplug has created a promotional campaign and event called Make Room for the Fit which promotes Honda's new subcompact Fit. The agency created a mocrosite that contains a rap-ish video that's so bad it's good or so good it's "bad." We can't decide. It all promotes an April 6 event at Gould Plaza where students can check out the Fit, grad a pizza from Mercato and crank up on Red Bull. If you're in the area, stop by and see what Sparkplug came up with. We'll will say it's far better than our lame college print ad for some Dodge we, or should I say my teammates, came up with.

Written by Steve Hall    Comments (13)     File: Events, Online, Promotions     Mar-30-06  
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Comments

The NYU kids have done a nice job, but Honda's set a very high bar for the Fit's online advertising. Quirky, cool, and very distinctive. Here's some of the "official" online ads, fyi:

http://adverlicio.us/tags/2000

Posted by: adverlicious on March 30, 2006 03:34 PM

This is not lame enough to be cool, and is possibly infringement on the Beasties

Posted by: Alex on March 30, 2006 04:51 PM

a waste of time.

Posted by: Daniel on March 30, 2006 06:49 PM

After all these years it still seems that there are no good web design programs available in American Universities. I guess they don't teach video opt/ecoding either. Was there a 30 min deadline to film and put the site together? and is there a myspace page yet?

hate

Posted by: anon@anon.com on March 30, 2006 10:41 PM

I was involved in this and we did a lot of research on the copyright issue. We realized that although this has commercial aspects, this is technically for a non-profit educational issue (our Advertising Management class) and therefore fit under Fair Use as a parody.
As far as Honda's real Fit ads go, that's actually refreshing to see because our print campaign is much closer to the link you provided, adverlicious. We're trying to post our posters soon. We just figured we had freedom to be a little different in the viral campaign.

But more importantly, anonymous, what didn't you like about video opt/ecoding (I actually dont' even know what that is)? We used Dreamweaver to design and most people I've sent the site too are more surprised that a video I worked on got on a Honda site instead of realizing we made the site as well.

Posted by: zak on March 31, 2006 10:36 AM

Question: Didn't the fact that you had to research copyright law to produce a "creative video" possibly raise a red flag that this video or effort isn't all that...well...creative?

And yes you do have freedom to be different, and you failed.

Dreamweaver has nothing to do with video encoding. Look it up.

Posted by: Daniel on March 31, 2006 01:17 PM

Daniel,

With comments like that, is it any wonder the general public thinks the advertising business is made up of a bunch of sleaze balls? Come on, these guys are students learning the ropes of advertising. They don't have all the answers and they are learning as they go.

Perhaps bit of helpful information from us rather than spiteful commentary from you would serve these guys better, don't ya think? Grow up and act like the advertising professional you're supposed to be. Anon and Alex, you too.

Posted by: Steve Hall on March 31, 2006 01:33 PM

taken to heart.

Posted by: Daniel on March 31, 2006 02:21 PM

man, you guys are ruthless. These are kids in an ad class. As steve said, you should have seen the sh&t i made back then. The point is that they are learning the ropes and we should applaud their effort and give them advice instead of shoot them down.

Keep up the good work Zak, and learn to develop a thick skin. There some real a--holes out there. But there are also some great teachers and mentors as well. Hopefully you will meet more of the later.

Good Luck

Posted by: Stu on April 1, 2006 05:14 PM

Hey, just wanted to clarify that I know Dreamweaver isn't a video encoding program, I was responding to the person talking about American schools not having good web design programs. But I guess he was talking about a program where we'd be taught it instead of an actual software program?
Anyway, calling song parodies inherently not creative isn't necessarily fair since we're marketing majors and not all inclined enough to write our own music. We were just looking for something with some comedic value.
Glad that some of you liked it. With anything some people are going to like and some people are going to hate. I'll keep you guys posted on when we post more things on the site and how we do against the other 19 schools we're competing against (Most of which used Myspace or Facebook. Only one other school made a legitimate website.)

Posted by: Zak on April 2, 2006 05:29 PM

Hey, we added our print ads here. Let me know what you think:
http://www.makeroomforfit.com/gallery.php

Posted by: Zak on April 5, 2006 02:45 AM

Thank you very much for all your article. It is really great, when someone would share they info or knowledge with other people. Very useful to have all new technology not used properly or nonetheless not at all.Would recommend to some of my friends to read and learn. I will do some researches for my essay(http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmbd4.htm ) but your article give me some more ideas . Thanks

Posted by: Manna Kling on June 16, 2006 07:47 AM

Thank you very much for all your article. It is really great, when someone would share they info or knowledge with other people. Very useful to have all new technology not used properly or nonetheless not at all.Would recommend to some of my friends to read and learn. I will do some researches for my essay(http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmbd4.htm ) but this give me some more ideas . Thanks

Posted by: Manna Kling on June 16, 2006 07:49 AM

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