Honda campaign nods to the power of brand above all else

A campaign from Honda, featuring slogans including ‘We also do motorcycles’ and ‘You know what fits perfectly with a biker jacket’, affirms the power of ‘sign’ value in today’s consumer society, and we’re here for it.

Honda’s latest campaign with DDB Paris is entitled ‘Paris, London, Milan, Le Mans’. Timed and targeted to coincide with Paris Fashion Week 2024, the campaign features models kitted out in some decidedly fetching Honda-branded apparel, with slogans that relegate the company’s core product, its motorcycles, to mere accessories.

Although lighthearted in tone, placing a brand’s image as hierarchically paramount is a tactic seen in several adverts in which a company’s main physical offering is overtaken by the lifestyle and buzz associated with it.

Red Bull, for example, conjures up images of extreme sports and its various high energy festival activations before you remember that it is, in fact, merely a highly caffeinated, joyfully weird-tasting fizzy beverage.

Honda, as this magazine has highlighted in past articles, knows what it’s doing when it comes to branding, with even subtle changes in its logo over the years somehow adding up to far more than the sum of their parts.

The retro ‘winged’ logo used in the recent ad is synonymous with the motorcycle arm, and nods to a more nostalgic, edgier incarnation of the company.

Getting philosophical

Honda’s acknowledgment of the overwhelming power of its brand would no doubt cause postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard to turn in his grave. His work argued that society is organised around consumption - with postmodernity putting ‘value’ less on the utility of a product, but more on its ‘sign’ value: ie the need to display prestige, identity, and standing.

Seeing as Baudrillard is not around to argue with me, I might as well add that I reckon there’s been a shift in the depiction of identity in branding in our post-2008/post-9-11 world. There seems to be a general movement towards building ‘community inclusivity’ over ‘exclusivity’,  and Honda is a recent example of this.

There has also been a similar shift in fashion. The messaging around designer brands in the 90s, for example, was one of mystique, prestige and affluence, whereas in 2024, the likes of Loewe are opting for more relatable brand ambassadors, while Gucci and Prada veer their campaigns and brand aesthetic more towards artistic sensibilities and high brow cultural statements to signal their excellence.

Honda has achieved a lot through its uncompromising innovation and feels confident to bask in the reflected glory of its carefully honed brand and the community it’s built around it. Here at Creative Moment (which is not just a website), we celebrate their well-earned brand might.