The Impossible Dream: the 2005 original

Read the campaign story

Honda’s original Impossible Dream film arrived in December 2005 with a useful problem to solve: people needed to see more than a car manufacturer. Contemporary Marketing Week reporting described a singing test driver moving between Honda vehicles, from motorcycles to a powerboat. A waterfall provides the apparent ending before a balloon supplies an improbable escape. The History of Advertising Trust identifies Wieden+Kennedy, director Ivan Zacharias and production company Stink behind the two-minute commercial.

This is an edited fantasy, not an uninterrupted journey or a demonstration that a vehicle can survive the depicted hazards. Its value lies in how it organises a varied product range. Instead of putting separate business divisions into separate boxes, the film gives them one traveller, one direction and one musical performance. The objects change while the feeling of forward motion remains intact.

Editorial reading: The traveller is a device for transferring meaning between products. A small vehicle and a high-performance machine might otherwise invite very different purchasing conversations. Here, each becomes another expression of curiosity and ambition. The audience is asked to recognise a shared temperament before remembering a list of specifications. That is a portfolio argument made through continuity rather than a corporate organisational chart.

The escalating scale also prevents heritage from feeling like a museum tour. Older products are not presented as exhibits accompanied by dates. They are used as stages in an adventure. For a business with several generations of products, that distinction is practical: history becomes more interesting when it creates the next action. The sequence should still rest on verifiable products and capabilities, even when the surrounding story is openly fictional.

A smaller company could use the same organising principle without expensive locations or dangerous action. Follow one consenting customer through a sequence of legitimate uses, preserving a gesture, question or task across each transition. The connective device should explain why these offerings belong together. If viewers can recall the spectacle but cannot explain the relationship among the products, the film has entertained without doing its intended strategic work.

The sources establish the original execution and its launch period, not an isolated sales effect. This case excludes later re-edits. The transferable discipline is to choose a human-sized thread that makes a complicated portfolio legible, then check comprehension rather than assuming that admiration equals understanding. Production ambition can support that thread, but it cannot substitute for a clear reason the brand’s different parts belong together.

Give the portfolio a traveller

Follow one person or task through the range so the audience can understand the relationship among otherwise separate products.

Make history advance the story

Use older products as meaningful steps in an unfolding action rather than as a sequence of commemorative exhibits.

Test the connection, not just enjoyment

Ask viewers what unites the products and which brand owns that relationship before interpreting positive reactions as strategic success.

A small test for another brief

Connect three real offerings through one customer task.

Measure unaided brand recall and whether viewers can explain what connects the range.

Stop if the transitions imply capabilities the products lack or if viewers cannot identify the shared purpose.

• Choose three products with a defensible shared purpose.
• Film a recurring gesture linking three safe, ordinary uses.
• Compare the sequence with a conventional product montage.