The successful jump, as used in the ad, shows the team spell out Honda – IN A SINGLE, UNEDITED TAKE. That is not the same as a ‘live’ ad, i.e. one where if it goes wrong, the viewing public watch them fail, or worse, fall to their deaths, in glorious realtime.

Ergo, there is no ‘risk’ to Honda. Had they been preparing the ad when the plane crashed, likely as not it’d be front page news in a local Spanish paper that ‘a plane used for corporate filming had crashed’ or somesuch, and we’d be none the wiser.

Piloted by ASSIMO?

(sad for the people involved, of course)

Perhaps the plane fuselage was overloaded so it cracked. Just like any stress fracture in our cars, but a car is not as deadly as a plane.
Very sorry for the ones who perished.

Amen to that.

I find no difference between F1 and skydiving at all. Please explain.

Secondly, I will warn you that having a bunch of auto enthusiasts go out and test cars for reviews is disaster waiting to happen. Maybe the TTAC editor should reconsider the whole enterprise, after all, “What’s the downside?”

Hopefully, I won’t have any I told you so’s on this one. Also, hopefully the inevitable attacks of the nanny state won’t destroy skydiving OR sports cars.

Well, you might have a point, except for the fact that Royal Dutch Shell, et al, are not in this business “for the common good”.

So I guess that’s it for the commercial dive industry then? If you use off-shore oil — and who here doesn’t? — you depend in a large part on paying people to risk their lives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Ranger
http://www.oilrigdisasters.co.uk/

“The accident merely proves how risky the stunt was.”

No, the proof of the risk was obvious to all prior to the stunt. These were not the first skydiving fatalities. Honest!

Another aicraft-related skydiving accident happened over the weekend, this one here in the States.

The fact that the same plane used in the stunt crashed the next day, killing two people, may or may not have anything to do with– or potentially had anything to do with– the Honda ad. But my basic point remains: Honda took a huge risk to promote its vehicles in a LIVE ad.

I get the point about F1 being live and risky, but surely you understand the distinction between motor racing and creating an event like this.

What about the performance themed car commercials of them driving fast and sliding – no one ever talks about how risky those maneuvers are even with a professional driver behind the wheel. Does anyone count the driver or cameraman deaths or even the deaths of those involved the day after when the commercial is over? I’m sure there have been some from something going wrong. Anyone ever watch WRC? Watch a race and watch the spectators standing inches from the racecars drifting through corners.

But I will give Honda credit for doing something different – something challenging – something risky – and something “not boring”.

The commercial and Honda had nothing to do with it, lady luck and the lack of her co-operation, or just bad maintenance played its part. If it had happened during the commercial then you would have had a point. But it didn’t.
Bit of a low blow with the i told you so’s, would have expected better.

Skydiving is hard on airplanes, and my initial speculation is that this accident occurred because the airplane had been used for a prolonged period of time under conditions that it was not designed for. If further investigation confirms my suspicions, then the Honda advertisement was clearly risky due to the nature of the stunt and I feel that TTAC was justified in identifying the potential issues beforehand and for posting this wake-up call afterwards.

I wonder if we haven’t gone off the deep end with worries about “risk”. As mdf pointed out, life is a terminal disease. It’s tragic that the pilot and the skydiver lost their lives in this accident, but as one who occasionally takes risks with my life, I can’t imagine they would have preferred avoiding the risk to doing something they loved doing. And the fact that the wing snapped off the aircraft was not unlike being struck by lightning. It happens, but let’s not all worry about walking around with ground wires attached every time there is an electrical storm. Just how many airplanes fall out of the sky each year from wing failure, and what does this have to do with advertising?

To extend your lack of logic on this one a little further, if they drove to the airport in a 15 passenger van and it rolled over and killed 2 of them, would that also prove the stunt was overly risky?

By the way, your RSS is broken again.

Personal risk-taking is one thing, but giving people money to take risks is another. It can be justified (if done for the greater good, i.e. for national defense), but if profit is the only factor, then don’t be surprised if some people call it downright evil.

So it’s both a moral and a marketing problem. Ad hominem words are not in order here. If Farago has the guts to point out the downside of a really questionable campaign, then more power to him.

Don’t do stunts on live TV, because the next day you’ll have an accident and die?

Just so you know the plane was chartered for that stunt and not company owned. Something tells me that Skydiving is inherently dangerous.

But I digress…let’s say Honda did a normal commercial and the producer died the next day – would another “told you so” be in effect?

Life is a terminal disease. Will that jumbo double bacon-cheeseburger give you colon cancer in 15 years?

http://travel.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm

Note the comparison to driving a car. I think we all accept that very few people get into their cars with suicidal notions. Can we extend the same courtesy to skydivers, dump truck drivers, and even bridge players?

Heck, I don’t even skydive! Maybe that needs to change. Money, meet mouth …