DIARY: 'Dead' Dutchman will recreate Honda's 'cog' for true domino effect

Campaign, Friday, 19 September 2003 12:00AM

Domino-toppling may not be globally renowned, but that could all change if the game's latest "crazy" tumbling attempt is a rip-roaring success.

Forget everything you've ever watched as a child on Roy Castle's Record Breakers. Forget the unglamorous locations - usually the nearest school gym if memory serves correctly - and the endless efforts to raise a nation's miniature flag for the finale of each "nail-biting" run ... will they all fall down or won't they?

It seems now the downtrodden domino's most glorious hour could finally have arrived.

For if what Robin Weijers, the Dutch domino-toppling world record holder, will try next week at Selfridges for Wieden & Kennedy cannot rescue the sport from its nerdy image, then surely nothing can.

As part of the IPA's contribution to the World Creative Forum, the ambitious Dutchman will attempt to replicate part of Wieden & Kennedy's much-vaunted "cog" ad for Honda, which was voted the "coolest ad of the year" by consumers in the Cool BrandLeaders survey. And he aims to do this using no fewer than 14,000 dominoes.

Quite a feat - if he can pull it off without using numerous takes, and requiring the spectacle to be filmed over two one-minute sections that are then cleverly sewn together.

Unlike the Wieden & Kennedy "cog" creators, Ben Walker and Matt Gooden, who dreamed up the domino challenge, Weijers will have one chance and one chance only to get it right.

And the pressure's on, according to Walker. "If he doesn't get it right he's a dead man," he says with an edgy laugh.

Walker admits that the "cog" ad was partly inspired by a fascination for the antics of bearded men, obsessed with spending hours standing thousands of black and white wooden blocks in elaborate neat rows and then watching them all fall down one after the other.

This article was first published on Campaign