I love how this is entirely against Vimeo's TOS: http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:11585

except for the special cases they make.

Fair point, but I'd like to think that if Hummer came to them, they'd say no. Something about an affordable hybrid car seems aligned with the personalities running Vimeo.

That's just bullshit. The last thing I want from a content host is an agenda and bias against certain players.

The power of the consumer is the choice to support the vendor they identify with. Spoiler alert: each content host, vendor, business has an agenda, it's just a matter of how quickly you can identify it.

And please - hold it against a business for trying to add additional revenue? How's your balance sheet?

On the latter point, it's the opposite. Companies shouldn't leave money on the table for ideological reasons as petty as too-low-mpg. [note that I don't think vimeo actually did anything wrong here - it's the idea that is bullshit, not any action they have taken. I loved the Ad.]

Consumers should move towards vendors that are as neutral as possible. Personal bias shouldn't influence a business decision.

My agenda for Tipjoy is to make money. We're completely content neutral, within the bounds of the law.

That was great and well done. You got to love the "what the...?" moment it gives when it does something so unexpected by your brain and the "waaa... nice" at the end. It doesn't say much about the product, something about Honda, but still, it's a great ad imho.

Also, to make my comment more useful; check out this youtube video : http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii

Ads have been "not saying much about the product" for awhile. Advertisers have known that ads work best on the emotional level since the early 20th century.

See: The Century of the Self

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3LSyck0YTE

To me, there is a clear parallel between this ad and Hacker News itself!

Unrelated to the ad, but I must say I am so thrilled with Honda for taking hybrid out of the luxury trim / status category and bringing it down to something that you can do without the huge upfront cost.

I got to see one of these Insight's in person at a recent Honda event, and I knew immediately 'this is my next car'.

For any fans of Honda (or just the curious), I highly recommend all of Honda's videos here: http://dreams.honda.com

Yeah, it is amazing how cheap Honda is offering the Insight.

I've been working on a Hybrid related project and done some research. One of the most interesting was an informal interview with the guy who headed the development the FSI technology at Audi done by a colleague of mine. This guy and his team introduced the technology to Audi's Le Mans racing efforts and then within 3 years brought the technology to regular cars. When we asked him to estimate the costs of a full hybrid powertrain including everything (R&D, Marketing, Party, Assembly etc.) he threw out a number around 20'000 € (which is around US-$26'000) which means that Hybrid cars currently must be highly subsidized by the producers of such cars as the Prius and especially the Insight.

I appreciated in particular the fact that they really did it like the ad is showing it, by parking a lot of cars in the desert and turning their lights on and off, as opposed, for example, to the recent ad by Samsung with the sheep in the hills (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iCXvJ-jJzI) that clearly had at least some parts done artificially.

Nowadays, the whole point of that kind of things is to do it for real. Doing it through CGI is just easier and defeats the purpose. It actually reminds me of the Bravia ad from 4-5 years ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A&fmt=22) where Sony had tens of thousands of colored balls bouncing in a San Francisco street.

The collaboration with Vimeo with the Flash overlay is also a nice touch.

Here's the making of that Sony Bravia ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1bEOtpqYpA

People in riot gear outfits and shields and stuff to protect themselves from thousands of bouncy balls. :)

Also the guy at just after 4:00 is hilarious....

apparently they didn't http://www.adrants.com/2009/03/honda-insight-commercials-car...

There is even a making of on vimeo http://vimeo.com/4295148

Wait, the sheep thing was CG? No way!

i wonder what honda paid for that?

Wow. Props to Honda's marketing department. Reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI2MFvOC94A where they gut grooves in the road so that when a car drove over them it played a song. They did this for a civic commercial.

how?

It looks like a Flash overlay. If you scroll down during the video you can keep right clicking until you get html.

It breaks if you resize the page text in browser (Ctrl++), before stating the video, and shows you how the overlay fits over the page.

Not from the makers of Pontiac