This was my campaign for Super Bowl 2017, featuring some awesomely embarrassing high school portraits of inspiring figures. Directed by Angus Wall and produced by Elastic, the spot utilized lookalikes and 3D body scans – among other VFX magic. The campaign generated a 500% increase in Honda website visits, 4,590 PR clips, 48 million views, and 4.6 million shares/comments.
Clio Award Shortlist for Special Effects
Indie Award for “Best Creativity”
One Show Merit “Social Media Campaign”
#2 AdMeter Ranking
Directed by Rupert Sanders, "Unstoppable Dreams" features a reverse poem technique. It's about how failure can be a great teacher– when we push through we often find our greatest strengths.
The story of The Honda Wall of Dreams is one of emotional power and resonance: Each vehicle milestone featured demonstrates that amazing things happen when you allow yourself to keep dreaming. To bring to life the story of Honda brand innovation and sustainability in an emotionally evocative way, we commissioned epic film poster artist Paul Shipper to create a universe of vehicles and athletes past, present, and future. Featuring many Easter eggs, including hidden quotes by the founder, Soichiro Honda, the poster serves as a portal activating a narrative AR experience with four unique animated Honda stories. Showcasing 52 vehicles and 10 athletes, the art was rendered from over 1,000 photo references, a project that lasted over a year and required 65 rounds to complete. Itself a testament to a commitment to excellence, the art has been installed in high-traffic OOH locations (digital animated and static versions) in major cities as well as in digital and social mediums.
The campaign increased traffic to Honda.com by over 300% more than the projected amount as the Wall of Dreams paid tribute to all of Honda’s greatest milestones, announced the brand’s exciting vision for tomorrow, and truly showcased The Power of Dreams.
“Instead of being afraid of the challenge and failure, be afraid of avoiding the challenge and doing nothing.” – Soichiro Honda
Honda has always been a company driven by dreams. When others say something can’t be done, Honda proves them wrong with sheer determination. It’s that spirit that has defined how Honda has overcome challenges, sparked industry-leading successes, prompted innovations and propelled the brand forward into the future.
Directed by Scott Lyon, this brand piece tells the story of Honda determination in a first-person perspective, putting viewers into the drivers’ seat of some of the most iconic Honda vehicles–past, present and future, as a seemingly impossible challenge is overcome. It’s a story that only a company like Honda can tell.
For the social campaign we leveraged the breadth of vehicles featured in our video content to create inspiring quotes designed to share on Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube Reels and Instagram Stories.
To bring to life milestones from the brand’s history, we created short animated films for Instagram, YouTube Reels and SnapChat.
Honda Highlights its Chase for Greatness in New Rugged Campaign
Co-launched with the powerful new single “Triumph” by Bishop Briggs, the spot highlights Honda's most rugged truck and SUV lineup yet. “Chasing Greatness” illuminates the company’s off-road innovations and successes using projections of Honda athletes on rugged terrain. Shot by Hoyte Van Hoytema and directed by Lauren Sick.
We created a 360 campaign for PBSKids featuring TV, social videos, digital banners, gifs and print. “You Taught Me” celebrates how much we teach our kids but also how much we learn from them. Things like to slow down, find joy in everyday moments and the fun of making up the words to silly songs.
Concepted, cast and shot during the height of COVID, these pieces feature real families in their homes and neighborhoods across the country. Director Rafaela Carvalho shot the commercial using an array of cinematographers and their families as the talent in the spot. Camera feeds via zoom and Qtake were used in the families’ houses, backyards and neighborhoods for the moments that became “You Taught Me.”
Emmy Nominee - December 2022
Project Courage is a charity initiative to bring joy and stress relief to hospitalized children. Concepted from start to finish by our team at RPA, the Honda Shogo is a small electric, motorized vehicle that transports sick kids to and from their treatments and procedures. The initiative is now being rolled out to children’s hospitals across North America.
Awards:
One Show - Bronze Pencil - Branded Entertainment: Experiential / In-Person Events
One Show - Bronze Pencil - Pharma: Innovation and Transformation
Indie Awards - Gold - Audiovisual
ADC - Design for Good - Single
Clios - Silver: Consumer Brand Health - Experience/Activation
Clios - Bronze: Consumer Brand Health - Partnerships & Collaborations
Clios - Shortlist: Consumer Brand Health Initiative - Design
Gold Addy
Shorty Impact Awards - Corporate Social Responsibility, Automotive, Long Form Video
This campaign brought to life the mehdiocrity that is the existing hybrid market as a way to launch the Honda Insight. We worked with director Patrick Daughters to create a hyper-visual world of meh-ness. The campaign spanned TV, social and digital, plus a large-scale digital OOH installation.
2019 Gold ADDY “Social Campaign”
2019 Silver ADDY “Television Campaign”
2019 Silver ADDY “Campaign Sound Design”
A recent brand spot for Honda directed by Paul Mitchell of A52, The Origin of Determination is a story of Honda innovation. The spot features over 100 of the most iconic Honda vehicles from across history and it was created with a combination of live action and CG.
Awards + Press:
One Show - shortlist: Brand campaign
One Show - shortlist: Automotive single
Gold Addy
Shorty Awards - Audience Honor
Shortlisted in the Sundance Film Festival, this film follows the migration of the illustrious plastic bag from a supermarket to the heart of the Pacific Ocean. Directed by Jeremy Konnor, narrated by Jeremy Irons and written by yours truly, this film helped to pass the first ban on single use plastic bags in the United States. The film has since toured film festivals across the world inspiring more bag bans.
Sundance Film Festival, shortlist
Cannes Lions, shortlist
Clio Award for Film
For Women’s Month we chose to inspire audiences and celebrate the achievements of CWSA athletes with a bold, type-driven social campaign. We selected several of the most powerful women in sport and used their quotes to bring several films to life. Produced during COVID, we conducted our shoots and records entirely via Zoom, giving each woman a kit to record herself remotely. The campaign ran on Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat and received an overwhelmingly positive response.
We worked with artist/illustrator, Mike Perry to create a playful social campaign for the new Civic Si. The thought behind it was to “rev up” your everyday drive. The video content was designed to run on Reddit specifically in categories related to gaming, tech, sci-fi, and sports.
Results: 11MM impressions each / Surpassed benchmark click-throughs by 5x / 88% completion rate
Is the all-new Fit fit for you? We worked with director Mike Maguire to create a super fun, off-beat launch campaign for the new Honda Fit. This campaign included a minimal color palette and a bizarre cast of characters.
To launch the first-ever, CR-V Hybrid, and the redesigned CR-V, we teamed up with Smith & Foulkes to create a visually spectacular Rubik’s Cube world. Combining practical effects and CG, we showcase the “fun to drive” nature of the CR-V in a variety of terrains and driving conditions.
Gold Addy, 2021
Statistics show that 1 in 3 parents text and drive with their kids in the car. Honda knew that in order to promote safer driving, they had to approach the topic from a new angle. For Distracted Driving Awareness Month, we created #TheTextTalk – a social campaign that asked parents to pledge not to text and drive with their kids in the car.
Video cutdowns were shared on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube alongside a customizable pledge on IG stories.
Results: Honda received a positive response from all their social channels, resulting in families from across the country participating. The campaign received over 19MM impressions in just over two weeks. The long-format video alone received over 3.4MM views. A total of 25k clicks to pledge were garnered after receiving a 48% view rate, 12% completion rate and 0.29% CTR. Honda was able to surpass last year’s benchmarks by 1.5x.
To showcase the “Power of Ridgeline” (the new truck from Honda), we teamed up with stop-motion director, Pes to create full-scale stop-motion animated projects. The production was so large, the only place we could film was the Busby Berkeley stage in Culver City. The sound design included over 500 individual sounds.
This was a short film featuring the Honda Ridgeline created to run on Facebook – it eventually became five unique micro-targeted films. I’m sharing the long-form here because it got quite a lot of attention on social and warmed a lot of hearts.
We were tasked with creating 60-80 assets for gaming month and this is a smattering of the work created. We partnered with animation company, Roger to create an awesome homage to Honda’s history in games.
Awards: Silver Addy
We also created several 8-bit boomerangs that take our Hondas from photo-real to game world. Plus a series of Giphy sticker packs evoking different game genres.
We worked with Emmanual Lubezki and director, Joachim Bach to create this beautiful, emotional regional (that means for the dealers!) campaign for Honda.
Using a blend of CG and practical vfx, we created an impossible testing facility to demonstrate the impressive versatility of the all-new Pilot Elite.
This is a non-profit I have been working with for about 15 years - they provide transitional housing for kids who age out of the foster system. Started by one woman named Lauri Burns, The Teen Project gives kids a nice home to live in, mental health resources, emotional support, self-respect and structure: the resources they need to build a sustainable adult life. This is a sample of the work I’ve done for them over the years. Because everyone deserves an equal chance at life.
This is a documentary series of commercials directed by The Selby, featuring real people in several target markets. We found unique individuals who were achieving person greatness then brought their stories to life.
