Ben Ayers

We’ve seen so many car ads featuring metal boxes sweeping around perilous bends with the sun glinting off their shiny new paintwork that we’ve almost become immune to them. Well that seems to be the thinking of the marketing bosses of the big car manufacturers. They’re now pulling out the stops to find more interesting ways to spend their enormous marketing budgets. Honda’s skydiving campaign culminated with the first live ad in UK TV history last night.

According to Channel 4 the ad drew an average audience of 2.2 million with viewing growing by 8%, or 168,000 people, by the conclusion of the three-minute stunt, which took up an entire ad break at around 8.10pm.

Mark Sweeney asks Guardian Unlimited readers ‘did it work?’

Also, Nissan are getting in on the act with their campaign for the Qashqai Challenge, getting a load of free runners to entertain commuters at a bus stop outside Waterloo station with flips and somersaults on the pavement. 

They’ve also managed to get some PR after Transport for London were bounced into warning commuters that such stunts have “the potential to be very dangerous.” You never know they may even get in the Daily Mail too.