• by Karl Greenberg , October 8, 2009

Honda is extending its documentary series, "Dream the Impossible," with a new film, "Racing Against Time." The new addition to the series, which launched in January, explores how the constraints of time and competition inspire invention and creativity.

The fifth film in the series -- developed by Honda's agency, Santa Monica, Calif.-based RPA -- will appear mid-month on Dreams.Honda.com. But Barbara Ponce, manager of corporate and diversity marketing at the Torrance, Calif.-based automaker, tells Marketing Daily the company offered a sneak peek on Twitter on Thursday.

"We have had a lot of feedback on the films on Twitter, so we decided to launch there exclusively," she says. Per Ponce, the purpose of the campaign, which targets adults 25 to 49, is to align Honda with innovation in the minds of people who only know the company for cars. "The spirit of the Honda brand is part of our culture, but it is not so clear to people outside the company," she says.

The documentary series on Dreams.Honda.com includes films that leverage speculation on subjects like what transportation might look like in 80 years as a platform for showcasing Honda's brain trust.

The new film does likewise by detailing how skateboarder Tony Hawk, "Star Trek" and "Transformers" screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and IndyCar driver Tony Kanaan used the pressure cooker to come up with -- respectively -- a radical 900-degree skateboard stunt, to dream up the script for the "Star Trek" movie, and to handle a pit stop at an Indy race. And it features Honda engineer Sachito Fujimoto, who recalls how he learned that Honda had begun touting its new fuel-cell vehicle before he had begun to develop it, which put him under pressure to actually develop it.

Ponce says that since the films launched, Honda has seen a 10-fold increase in traffic to the site, and that Honda has a long-term commitment to produce six to eight films per year. "I have a file cabinet filled with projects at Honda that lend themselves to [the films]," she says.

The company will also air trailers for the five documentaries during ESPN's "30 for 30" weekly film series. The series commemorates ESPN's 30th anniversary with 30 sports documentaries covering the past three decades. The trailers will also appear on 30for30.espn.com.

"This opportunity is unique because it allows us to run longer-form 90- to 120-second trailers on TV, where traditional ads are 30 seconds," says Ponce. A sixth film, "Living with Robots," is in production, and will launch in January.