The concept behind the “500 horsepower” campaign concept stemmed from playing with the concept of horsepower, and how many horses it takes to hypothetically match the power of 1 modern vehicle. While not a completely original idea, the execution here was what was meant to diffrentiate it from other usage of horse imagery in car was the execution. My idea was to take the amount of horsepower the Mazda 3 produced and double that number, hiding the car amongst the 250 horses required to match the output of the car. What was good about this idea was the sheer flexibility of it, ranging from serious and down to earth, to downright absurd.
The first concept was for a 2 page print ad using a clear first page, allowing the car and main tagline to be completely obscured from view by the horses and an initial text line reading 500 horsepower. When the page was turned, it would reveal only the car remaining, with the text now reading 250 horsepower and a line highlighting how you can fit all those horses into one driveway. This execution was meant to be eyecatching as well as stand out due to its unconventional delivery method with the usage of the transparent page.
The second execution was for the social media side of the campaign, inspired by the sheer insanity and rediculousness that is the social media accounts of companies like Denny’s. The image here acted as a bad “Where’s Waldo” featuring 250 horses (that were painstakingly counted out to ensure it was actually 250), along with one Mazda 3 poorly hidden among them. The caption, while being independently silly and playful, was also a loose reference to a video circulating at the time of a man entering a Burger King drive-thru wearing multiple Burger King crowns and proceeding to order “5 whoppers, and 5 [*dramatic pause*] more whoppers”. This caption was chosen because it was still able to act independently of the reference as simply a ridiculous thing to say that was still relevant to the post and on brand with the campaign, but also it had the added bonus of cultural relevance to meme culture that meshes well with prior examples of absurdist brand humour.
