Award for Campaign that celebrates Honda staff returning to their jobs

Honda's upbeat press ads to celebrate staff's return to work as its Swindon factory re-opened has won an award for best national newspaper campaign of last month.

The campaign featured poems in praise of workers at the plant, which closed for four months earlier this year because of the slump in car sales, against a background of images evoking factory life such as bacon, a cup of tea and an iron.

All five ads in the campaign, by agency Wieden & Kennedy London, have been nominated for the national ad of the year of awards to be held in January.

Darren Bailes, the creative director at ad agency VCCP and an awards judge, said the Honda campaign effectively operated as "news in the form of advertising".

The temporary closure of Honda's factory saw 1,300 workers take voluntary redundancy and the remaining 3,400 agree a 3% pay cut for 10 months. Employees said they were pleased to return to work at the plant.

"The reopening could have been swept under the carpet all too easily, the shutdown being seen as a real blow to the pride of the brand," said Bailes. "This recession is something we are all in together, the workers and the manufacturers are all in the same boat."

From Media Guardian