Honda plans to run a Super Bowl ad for the second straight year with the automaker using this year's game to plug the redesigned 2017 Honda CR-V.
Honda agency-of-record RPA will handle the spot. Honda declined to reveal creative details or the length of the ad.
"The Super Bowl is the appropriate stage to introduce America to the bold and sophisticated new Honda CR-V," Susie Rossick, assistant vice president of Honda auto marketing, said in a statement. "With the largest audience and reach of any single television event, the Super Bowl is a platform befitting the CR-V's status as the best-selling SUV in America, and the perfect place to celebrate CR-V's 20th anniversary."
Honda is only the second automaker to confirm an ad buy for Super Bowl LI, following Kia.
Toyota and Mini -- which advertised in Super Bowl 50 -- have confirmed they are not coming back this year. Audi, Buick, Hyundai, Jeep and Honda-owned Acura also ran 2016 Super Bowl ads, but have yet to clarify their 2017 plans.
Last year Honda ran a 60-second Super Bowl ad for its Ridgeline truck that featured sheep singing Queen's "Somebody to Love." The spot was released on Feb. 1, the Monday before the game. Honda sat out the 2015 game after running a spot in 2014 called "Hugfest" that promoted safety using a humorous approach that starred Bruce Willis and Fred Armisen.
The 2017 Super Bowl ad marks the third time Honda will feature the CR-V in the game. In 2012, Honda plugged the launch of the previous generation CR-V with a spot called "Matthew's Day Off" that starred Matthew Broderick and paid homage to the 1986 movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
The CR-V's Super Bowl debut ad came in 2007. That visual-effects-laden ad was called "News" and showed the CR-V traveling through a print issue of USA Today, popping up in photos that showed a hurricane, an opera, a football game and Mars.
This year, the automaker is making a bid to build momentum for the redesigned CR-V. The vehicle went on sale Dec. 21 and features the model's first-ever turbocharged engine, according to Honda. Honda sold 319,557 CR-Vs in the first 11 months of 2016, up 1.6% from the same-period in 2015, according to data compiled by Automotive News.
Honda stated that the CR-V is "on its way to its best sales year of all time and will mark seven straight years of U.S. sales growth for CR-V and the model's fifth year in a row of being the outright best-selling SUV in America."
