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London Calling

MARCH 16, 2008
The portrait version of one of the ads for Honda
Just before Thanksgiving, I got a call from Wieden Kennedy/London to work on a series of pieces for the Civic Hybrid as part of a broader campaign for HONDA's "Problem Playground", which focuses on their creative engineering efforts. The various images all play off the theme of puzzles to highlight the challenges that Honda surmounted in creating their performance hybrid. As we went along, the number of formats and uses expanded dramatically, and ultimately called for two complete versions of each piece to accommodate the horizontal and vertical uses (6 paintings in total, several requiring multiple pieces within each piece which were then composited for animations). In the end, I worked on this project through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve, wrapping it up just a few weeks shy of the media buy. I understand these can be found throughout the subway ("tube") and train stations, on billboards and building wraps all over the city, and even animated on digital billboards in London. Here's one of the paintings I did for this project, along with some detail shots from the landscape version. Just last week I found out we won the ANNA Award (Awards for National Newspaper Advertising) for this piece in the series, so I thought I'd show it off here. Hats off to Creative Directors Kim Papworth & Tony Davidson, and  creative team Mark McCall, Frank Ginger, Sam Heath, Mark D'Abreo, Richard Dorey, and Guy Featherstone for sending this one my way.
detail from the landscape version
The hybrid engine had to be very accurately painted—clients always love their product!
The link to the main Problem Playground website url could be found on the pencil
© 2024 Marc Burckhardt