Clint Eastwood in Top 6 Super Bowl 2012 car commercials (+video)

5. Honda Ferris Bueller's Day Off

A Honda CR-V is not a Ferrari 250GT California. But you can't help but enjoy this homage to the 1986 movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

What makes a tribute to truancy – in this case, an actor skipping a day of work – a fit for Honda?

RPA executive creative director Joe Baratelli told Ad Week  that the agency decided to celebrate the redesigned Honda CR-V as a car for enjoying life, not just for running chores: "When we found out the timing of the launch of the CR-V, we felt it would be a great tent pole for the entire campaign, which centers around making a list of things you want to do before the things you have to do. 'Before you make a leap, make a list.'

The Santa Monica-based ad agency got Paramount, Matthew Broderick, and Todd Phillips on board. Phillips is a Hollywood director who's hit comedies include "The Hangover," "Old School," "Due Date," and "Road Trip."

The ad agency teased the new ad with a 10-second trailer, got buzz going on Twitter, and debuted the ad Jan. 30 on YouTube, which won it international media coverage (including this site)

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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