#Honda

Agency: Wieden+Kennedy, London
CD: Tony Davidson, Kim Papworth
CW: Ben Walker
AD: Matt Gooden
Production: Partizan, London
Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
Year: 2003

Having swept the majority of award ceremonies within the advertising community to date, Cog was widely believed to be the favourite for the industry’s top award, the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Cog held a disadvantage in that the chairman of the Cannes voting jury, Dan Wieden, was one of the founders of Wieden+Kennedy, the firm responsible for creating Cog; tradition holds that it is bad form for the chairman of the jury to vote for a piece by his or her own agency. Despite the lingering shadow of these accusations, Cog drew an unprecedented amount of critical acclaim. It received more awards than any commercial in history; so many that it was both the most-awarded commercial of 2004 and the 33rd-most-awarded commercial of 2003. The jury for the British Television Advertising Awards gave the piece the highest score of any commercial ever recorded; the jury’s chairman Charles Inge commented: “My own opinion is that this is the best commercial that I have seen for at least ten years.”