HONDA The Power of Dreams

Fujisawa and Ogata set the course for Honda’s new advertising strategy. Together they made the decision to place a continuous series of advertisements in both weekly general-interest magazines and women’s magazines in order to increase the Super Cub’s visibility among people who were still unfamiliar with motorcycles. Till then, motorcycle ads had rarely been seen in such magazines. However, by extending their advertising activities to include women’s magazines, they managed to attract even wider interest.

But this was hardly enough. In order for the ads to successfully appeal to the audience they were designed to reach, they needed to be fresh and interesting enough to attract the attention of ordinary people. The first round of advertisements was thus created.

Ogata recalled: “In the final stages of the Super Cub’s development, Mr. Honda told Mr. Fujisawa, ‘This is a bike that a soba noodle delivery man can ride with one hand and a stack of noodle trays balanced on his shoulder.’ Mr. Fujisawa then quickly decided that our first round of ads should be a soba noodle shop series. We drove off to the Tama River, which we often used for background when shooting commercial films, rushed into a soba shop named ‘Heitai-ya’ where we used to go for lunch, and asked the 16-year old shop boy there to be the model in our shoot.”

The result was the first round of Super Cub ads, which included the “Soba-mo genki-da, Okkasan!” (The Soba is Good, Too, Ma!) advertisement. This was based on the concept of a young lad having come to Tokyo from the countryside to learn the skills of making soba at a local soba shop. While there, he sends letters and photos to his mother in the remote countryside to let her know how he spends his days, which readers could see just as the mother would upon opening the envelope. The first letter read, “There’s no question that this shop’s biggest appeal is that it has a Super Cub. It makes deliveries so much quicker, which keeps the noodles from getting soggy. Our customer numbers have really taken off. The Super Cub also delivers great performance and lets me to ride with one hand, so I really feel like my job has become meaningful.”

The ad offered a witty sketch of the lifetyle of common folk, and was accompanied by advertising copy written in small type which read: “Quiet engine, world’s top 50cc, 4.5 horsepower.”

Soichiro Honda was delighted whenever he saw the ‘The Soba Is Good, Too, Ma!’ ad, and used to exclaim, “Great! A soba delivery boy with a good attitude always makes me happy.”

It was ads like this that really stuck in people’s minds, and soon came to symbolize Honda at a time when the company was striving to be a maker of easy-to-use mobility vehicles that could ease common people’s lives and make their days more convenient.

Ogata remarked, “’The ‘Soba Is Good, Too, Ma!’ ad was an instant hit. Mr. Fujisawa was overjoyed, telling me that Honda suddenly received a rush of orders for 4,000 Super Cubs from restaurants and soba shops throughout Japan. Since it did so well, we rushed to develop more ads in quick succession.”

Tokyo Graphic Designers, led by the young Tsugio Ogata, worked hard to come up with novel ideas. It wasn’t easy. They needed to be ads that grabbed the hearts of men and women of all ages to remind them that the Super Cub was mobility created just for them. Takeo Fujisawa didn’t approve of half-baked ideas, or those that were merely eccentric.

The second ad, “Fune-wa ro-makase, Riku-wa Cub!” (Leave the Boats to Their Oars; on Land It’s the Cub!) was thus created. Over a photo showing the Super Cub loaded aboard a river ferry, which were common throughout Japan at the time, was the copy, “When you’re in a hurry, the Honda [Cub] might ride slowly and easily over the water, but once you hit land, it’ll run like the devil.” As bridges were few in those days, river ferries were often people’s sole mode of transport across the water, so being easy to load onto a small boat was a big sales point for the Super Cub.

“This second ad also soon became a major sensation. During the photo shoot, we loaded a Super Cub onto a ferry as passengers were boarding. Everybody in the boat eyed it with great interest, as if saying ‘What’s this, then?’ or ‘That motorbike fits in a small river ferry just like a bicycle!’ The response we got this time was so strong that we based our ideas for the third ad on that experience,” Ogata recalled.

The third ad was titled, “Kyō-mo wadai-wa Kabu-ga saratta!” (Cub Grabs the Headlines Again!) Its photo showed people on a river ferry gazing admiringly at the Super Cub.

Just as Fujisawa envisioned, the Super Cub’s weekly magazine ads instantly became the main topic of conversation among the people it was aimed at, resulting in an almost virtuous circle of Ogata and his staff releasing one advertising masterpiece after another as this friendly little motorbike penetrated the hearts and minds of the populace.

Such advertising masterpieces included the “Tsuritengu-no ashi-mo Kabu” (The Cub Also Gives Legs to Master Anglers!) ad for fishing fans who enjoy riverbank fishing, the “Nikku-nēmu-wa Honda-sensei” (His Nickname is Professor Honda) ad in which a college professor commutes to school by Super Cub, “Tsūkin-rasshu-ni sayonara” (Say Farewell to the Commuter Rush), in which the Super Cub is ridden by a company employee in a business suit, “Tōkute chikakiwa.. Inaka-no michi” (So Distant Yet So Close… Country Roads), in which the Super Cub is ridden down an unpaved rural road, “Haikingu + Doraibu” (Hiking and Driving), which showed the Super Cub being ridden on a forest trail, and ”Nichiyō-to Getsuyō!” (Sunday and Monday!) ad, which featured two photos side-by-side of the Super Cub being ridden by a man wearing a necktie, and the same rider dressed to go fishing.