Honda launched a new model into its well-established compact SUV range in September 2013: the CR-V 2WD 1.6l i-DTEC Diesel.

We created a campaign for the new model that was bold, that challenged conventions and that went beyond the category into culture.

The centrepiece of the campaign - a film called Illusions - gained over 8m YouTube views with no paid seeding.

It was commercially successful and creatively lauded in equal measure.

The campaign helped Honda to hit all of its targets in terms of test-drives and dealer footfall, and helped to shift the target amount of actual metal.

The new CR-V 1.6l i-DTEC Diesel was targeted at people who hadn’t bought an SUV before, and they probably weren’t thinking about buying one either. They believed they either couldn’t (too expensive) or shouldn’t (gas guzzling) have one.

They definitely wanted one, for aesthetic and practical reasons, but had dismissed ever being allowed to have one.

Our challenge was to show this audience that the Honda CR-V was the SUV that they could own: that all the reasons they thought they couldn’t were now all the reasons they could.

We needed to do this in the most competitive segment in the car category, with a fraction of the budget that our key competitors had.

We needed a campaign that worked and got talked about outside of paid media support.

We needed something that would social shares AND footfall: something that would pull the heartstrings and purse strings.

The new CR-V shouldn’t exist but it does. It did more miles per gallon, but used less fuel. It drove like a dream, but had class leading CO2 emissions. We decided that it was “an impossible, made possible”.

We looked for an interesting way of dramatising impossible things that challenged your perceptions – that’s how the Illusions film was born.

The film ran across Europe in Q4 2013. It was supported by print, digital display and locally-activated experiential activity. There was also an online film giving a behind-the-scenes look at how the film was created. This alone reached nearly 600,000 YouTube views.

We believe the campaign is a testament to the continued effectiveness of great film and a sign that, even in an age of paid-for seeding and bought eyeballs, it is possible to reach enormous audiences organically through the power of the medium alone.