• by Karl Greenberg , November 8, 2010

Acura, Honda's luxury division, is trying something new for advertising: not playing a repurposed TV ad in cinemas. The company is running a new cinema spot that uses the theater's surround sound capability to demonstrate a new Acura in-vehicle audio system.

The 60-second ad, "Inside Elliot's Head," touts the Acura/ELS 10-speaker audio system, and its 5.1 surround sound system. The key to the effort is that it calls attention to the fact that the system was designed by recording engineer legend Elliot L. Scheiner, one-time assistant to Phil Ramone and a winner of six Grammys, in a collaboration with Panasonic. His initials are represented by the "ELS" in the Acura sound system's name.

The ad uses real dancers illuminated by ultraviolet light, in white-on-black costumes that look like musical instruments under UV. They choreography demonstrates how the Acura audio system takes the sound from a 2D to a 3D experience, with the instruments each in an ideal location based on Scheiner's ideas.

The spot uses a Scheiner-engineered version of Eric Clapton's "Layla" to make the point about how 5.1 surround-sound can alter the audio experience. Thus the campaign is running in theaters with 5.1 audio systems themselves. The idea is that the experience in the theater is intended to replicate the experience a person would have in an Acura vehicle.

Eric Goldstein, associate creative director at RP&,the division of RPA that handles Acura, said there were few other good options to demonstrate the sound system. "As we were thinking about the project, we saw that the most impressive thing would be to get into an Acura vehicle and hear it yourself. So in our mind the only way to do that was in theaters with 5.1."

Susie Rossick, manager of Acura national advertising, says the "Inside Elliot's Head" advertisement gives Acura the opportunity to brand the Acura/ELS sound system. "ELS is an Acura innovation that not everyone knows about."

Thus, the media placement is only for theaters with 5.1; thus, the ad is running in about half or about 1,200 of Screenvision's cinemas and all of Landmark Cinema's houses. The company secured the best placement for the ad, which would be right before trailers for upcoming films, when most seats are filled. The spot is running in PG-13 and R-rated films through November in Screenvision houses and through April in Landmark theatres, which screens primarily indie films.

Goldstein explains that the 5.1 designation describes both the speaker arrangement -- five speakers and one sub woofer -- and the way that each audio channel is separated to isolate voices. That is also demonstrated in the ad, when as Scheiner narrates, the dancers move away from each other.

According to Ferdie Taganas, VP, management supervisor at RP&, Scheiner has been involved in engineering the Acura sound system since around 2003, and is instrumental in speaker positioning, although this is the first time he has been spotlighted in an advertisement.

"The initial idea was focusing on sound design at first," says John Guynn, also an associate CD at RP&. "Once we had the idea of going into theatres and using the system to demonstrate how [Scheiner] can make something sound amazing, we needed to figure out an interesting way to make it visual; and we felt it needed a surrealistic take on it. Because we are basking dancers in black light, only the white portions of their costumes are illuminated; it creates a sense of objects floating in space."

Goldstein says the ad will not run on TV but it will be used in dealerships and auto shows, where the "Layla" demo with Scheiner's explanation will run in show display vehicles, with the visuals from the ad running on rear screens on vehicles like the Acura MDX.