The Cog is king

The Honda ‘Cog’ – reputedly the most expensive car advert of all time, is the nation’s favourite commercial according to the latest survey by leading used car portal Motors.co.uk.

In the survey of over 1,000 car buyers, Honda’s $6.2m ‘cog’ advert, which shows a domino effect of moving car parts, was voted the UK’s most amazing advert, ‘loved’ by over 63 per cent of motorists.

Second most popular was Skoda’s ‘cake’ advert, which was ‘full of lovely stuff’ for 24 per cent of buyers. The advert which builds a replica car entirely out of cake, reportedly cost £500,000 and used 180 eggs to create the life sized ‘Fabia fancy’. In third place was the Peugeot 206’s unforgettable ‘Bhangra Nights’ advert that involved the casting of over 100 elephants to crush an Indian driver’s car into the shape of the Peugeot.

Other car adverts singled out as worthy of praise were the Papa and Nicole series for the Renault Clio and the transforming Citroen C4.

Whereas car adverts have traditionally fared well in lists of people’s favourites, chewing gum hasn’t come off so lightly with Trident’s ‘Mastication for the Nation’ advert voted the worst commercial of 2007. The advert was named Campaign magazine’s ‘Top Turkey’ of 2007 receiving over 500 complaints from viewers.

Previous TV turn offs have included commercials for Camelot, Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and Glade Air Freshener.

Katie Armitage Marketing Manager for Motors.co.uk said: “This latest survey demonstrates that car buyers have surprisingly strong opinions about their favourite adverts which clearly demonstrates the importance of getting it right.

“On the Motors.co.uk website, buyers can browse through hundreds of real life video car adverts to find their perfect car, and although we wouldn’t recommend dealers produce anything as complicated as the Honda Cog advert, a good video can make all the difference to a sale.”

Motors.co.uk site is the first used car portal on the internet to provide car buyers with video car adverts in addition to the traditional text and photo listings. The site also provides ‘real advice from real people’ from the site’s ‘Real Review’ panel- the UK’s first panel of video car reviewers made up from members of the public.

The motors.co.uk network, which launched in January 2007 and includes Yahoo! Cars, Desperate Seller, The Independent, orange.co.uk, Top Gear and Fifth Gear among others, is now visited by over 2.7 million car buyers every month.

To help car buyers and sellers Motors.co.uk has put together a list of top tips for shooting the perfect car advert and they don’t involve cheesy catchphrases!

Always shoot outdoors and in good daylight - never when it’s raining or in the dark.

Park somewhere that looks clean and tidy and provides a plain backdrop. Weeds, litter or graffiti look awful.

Use a camcorder, or a digital compact camera that shoots video. More and more camera phones can now shoot video too, but the quality will be less impressive.

Ensure that the video lasts no more than three minutes, and that the file size you upload is no bigger than 10mb. Motors.co.uk accepts most of the commonly used video file formats.

Start with a shot of the car, framing a front three-quarters view. Make sure that your video shows the car inside and outside, front and rear. A series of shorter shots is preferable to a single one.