It was the year 1970, Pelé won his third soccer world cup at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico, after beating Italy. Brazil did not fit in partying, samba and jubilation; today known as Jogo Bonito, headed by the Brazilian star who, curiously, never played in Europe, had laid the foundations for a style of football that was as effective as it was showy and cheerful.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in Japan, the visionary Soichiro Honda, founder of Honda Motors had already managed to recover his company after the hard blow of the Second World War, It was beginning to surpass brands such as Triumph and Harley-Davidson and as if that were not enough, it helped to place Honda as a protagonist in the highest category of world motorsport, Formula 1.
The decade of magic
We could say that, In parallel, these two characters made the world vibrate before they met. But it was in 1974, with the arrival of the Honda CG 125, when the magical meeting took place, because the brand was ready to unveil said model worldwide, Brazil being the first country in which it would go on sale, so the story almost tells itself.
Pelé’s fame had already crossed any border and there was no one more popular in the Rio de Janeiro country than him. It was then that Soichiro Honda himself extended the invitation to be an ambassador for the then newcomer Honda CG 125a reliable model and one of the most popular of the brand, to date.
“Perfect team”
In times where the mirage of social networks with their numbers of views and followers make some characters call themselves “ambassadors” of… whateverit would be hard to believe that the marketing department of Honda, in those years, had absolutely nothing to do with the appointment of Pelé as ambassador of the commented model in Brazil; the initiative was the exclusive idea and work of Soichiro HondaBy the way, said appointment later spread to the rest of the continent.
And so the advertising campaign emerged, with a young Pelé accompanying the Honda CG 125, sometimes a red one and other times a yellow one, with the slogan printed on the ads: “Pelé, Honda and you, the “Perfect Team”. Needless to say, that motorcycle was a resounding sales success for the Soichiro Honda brand.
I wish in the world we had more characters of this level, each one creating, dreaming and succeeding from their trenches; they will certainly always be missed and remembered. Goodbye, Pele.
