In this Super Bowl XXXI spot, the new $19,000 CR-V sport-utility model travels in an effects-laden journey from photo to photo in an issue of USA Today, and thereby through a hurricane, an opera, a football game and Mars, with each locale illustrating a product feature.

The USA Today theme continued after the Super Bowl as the ad broadened into a $50 million integrated campaign, also by Rubin Postaer & Associates, as Ad Age reported the day after the game. The effort included ads in the newspaper and on its website, where a CR-V was shown motoring through columns of news briefs.

The link with USA Today originated in a positive review of CR-V that the paper published in 1996 as the car surged in the Japanese market; “News” opens with a 2-second shot of that review. Honda would buy a Super Bowl ad for the CR-V again in 2012 (“Matthew’s Day Off”).

BRAND: Honda

YEAR: 1997

AGENCY: Rubin Postaer & Associates

SUPERBOWL: XXXI

QUARTER AIRED: Q4