Drug-driving

Unwitting passengers have been taken for a ride in a new campaign against drug-affected driving.
In the advertisements, covert filming was carried out by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) over four days last year, involving more than 100 actors who thought they were being driven to a costume-fitting for a television commercial.
Their drivers were also actors who pretended to be on drugs while driving.
This is the first stage of a long-term behavioural change campaign aimed at reducing the harm caused by drugged drivers. At this point, the initial aim is simply to raise awareness of the issue of drug-driving, create conversations and encourage debate about the issue.
The ads should show the nervous and worried reactions of the unsuspecting passengers, with many offering to take over driving duties.
The drivers told their passengers they were on cannabis, prescription pills, ecstasy or P. “I just had some weed before I came round so I am in a good head space,” one driver told his passengers, as they exchanged (more or less) worried looks.

Approach is deliberately provocative but also non-judgmental. They are encouraging people to talk about a sensitive issue and consider how they feel about it, not telling them what they should think.

(More after the break)

Some signs can’t be ignored

This rude sign is placed in Israel. Agency Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv made it for media company JCDecaux.
Ignoring stop signs is the main cause of car accidents. The agency wanted drivers to pay more attention to them. They put up ads near junctions to resemble stop signs but with a twist, the hand in the sign was actually giving “the finger”. 

Buzzed driving costs you a fortune

December is the main period of the year in our niche. Busy times for fundraisers.

And in the awareness segment it is about road safety.

In this post a new campaign from the USA: Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving, part of the Project Roadblock.

This year’s edition from the project isn’t about pain or grief of a lost or injured family member. It is about money.

The two television PSAs, created pro bono by Merkley + Partners, target men aged 21 to 34. The PSAs illustrate that a single careless moment can not only be life-altering but expensive. The financial consequences of being stopped for driving buzzed can be around $10,000, including costs for posting bail, towing, fines, attorney fees and higher insurance premiums.

Another drinking and driving campaign goes off course

Interesting visual concept. Execution is good. Strategy? The usual problems.

I won’t even link to that study on social marketing and “defensive processing” for the millionth time, but I will reiterate it: People do not tend to see themselves in negative or shameful portrayals in social marketing ads. Even an occasional drunk driver would look at this and say to him/herslf, “that’s not me, I know my limit when I get on the road.”

The problem is that alcohol abuse and driving are both behaviours that are associated with denial. The problem drinker may spend years denying the problem. And everyone thinks they’re a better driver than they really are.

Campaigns like these, in my tiresomely-repeated opinion, are not effective in curbing drunk driving. What they are good at is reminding people who don’t drink and drive how awful drinking and driving is. Nobody wants to see themselves in it.

The new philosophy, among people I know who study the problem academically, is to increase the probability of getting caught for the occasional drunks, treat the underlying condition with hard-core drunks (and do whatever you can to physically prevent them from driving drunk), and incent and normalize the simple act of speaking out socially against peers who do it.

Not the creative team’s fault, though. It’s the strategy that’s tired and busted, even though it means well.

See the rest of the campaign after the break.

Stop the texts. Stop the wrecks. Stop the shock PSAs.

Texting and driving is still a very serious issue on the public roads. All distracted driving is. But even though the issue keeps getting more complicated, many of the PSAs about it seem stuck in the old “blood on the highway” driver’s education film style of shock advertising.

A new series from the U.S. Ad Council at first seems to be trying something different by taking a comic approach by showing the trivial dangers of texting and walking.

However, as comparison, they then go back to the old standard portrayal of a tragic car crash killing pedestrians. (In this case, due to text distractions.)

The idea that youth can be shocked out of a common behaviour — when they are constantly bombarded with much more explicit fake violence in games, movies, TV and online — is no longer the leading assumption among social marketers.

Plus, texting and walking can be deadly.

See two campaign videos after the break, plus one more that gives a straightforward explanation of the issue.

Drinking and driving can mark you for life

I don’t usually like Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaigns because I find they’re preaching to the choir by damning the offenders rather than providing a solution.

I hate drunk drivers too (there was another horrible killing by an alleged one here last weekend) but I also worry that the negative approach is not what keeps drinkers from driving and drivers from drinking. For one thing, many of them do not think they are in bad enough shape to kill anyone, so they will defensively process the message as not applying to them. None of them makes a rational decision to kill or injure others; they simply don’t see the connection.

This campaign is hard-hitting and emotional. But it appeals to (or rather, “incenses") the people who don’t drive impaired. WE see the drunk driver as a murderer, and want to see that person vilified. But they are not all the same. The average “episodic” impaired driver sees himself or herself as a normal person who can handle the situation. The repeat offender is often an alcoholic who cannot be stopped by anything but punishment, surveillance and treatment.

Social marketing is best at reinforcing behaviours people already believe in, so these ads could help remind someone at risk of “accidentally” drinking and driving to leave the keys home tonight. And if they’ve done that, they’ve helped. But the problem of drunk driving is a complex one that requires more than a metaphor to solve.

Two more ads after the break.

Before You Rush Through Here, Have a Word with Yourself

It is September, the time for road safety campaigns nearby schools, and therefore preventable.ca and BCAA Road Safety Foundation have teamed up to create a digital billboard to remind drivers that school zones are back in effect.
Mobile digital billboards at selected schools photographed speeding cars and post their photos on the billboard with the message “Before you rush through here, have a word with yourself.”

The first such road safety digital billboard of its kind in North America, the objective is to engage drivers to consider how they drive, particularly around school zones.
For this campaign creative agency Wasserman + Partners decided to use digital mobile billboards because of the surprise factor.

“This year’s preventable campaign addresses that little voice in your head: the one that berates you over and over when you do something wrong, the one that knows what you should be doing instead,” says Pauline Hadley-Beauregard, Vice President and Managing Director, Wasserman + Partners. “We know from research that people think serious injuries only happen to other people because they don’t know what they are doing, and so they take daily risks. Our goal is to shift our audience to the attitude that ‘Injuries can happen to me, but I can prevent them’.”

In 2010, Preventable achieved international attention with its back to school preventable injury initiative of a 3D illusion pavement image of a small girl chasing a ball, the first in Canada.
We wrote about that campaign too, see it here.

You can turn any car into a convertible

Denver-based agency Amélie Company literally peeled this two-stage billboard back like a can opener. They did it for a new campaign from the Colorado State Patrol. Visualizing what could happen when tailgating.

Tailgating is forbidden in many countries and there is a reason for that. Especially if you are behind a truck.

You can see the making of the billboard after the break.
Hat tip to The Denver Egotist.

See the previous campaign (2010) from Amélie Company for the Colorado State Patrol at The Denver Egotist.

Drink & Drive: Russian Roulette

It isn’t in the copy but the agency give this artwork the name ‘Russian ########’.
Great artwork but that name doesn’t cover the load. Drunk drivers can kill more than just themselves.

Nevertheless: great artwork, message is clear.
Client unknown.

“Mit nur einem glas riskiert du alles.
Alkohol am steuer tötet.”

“With just one drink you risk everything.
Drink and drive is killing.”

Is it time to go home?

Above two scenes from a technically perfect interactive video. In the video just ordinary scenes from a nice evening in a bar with friends. Until you move your mouse pointer over the video.

The mouseover effect bring scenes with the same people in unlimited drunkenness. In a state of being where it is impossible to behave responsible on the way home.

No it isn’t a campaign about alcohol abuse. It is a promo from Movia, the bus company from Copenhagen in Denmark. At the end in the video Movia asks you: Er det på tide at komme hjem? - Is it time to go home? Take the night bus.

The campaign landing page points visitors also to an iPhone or Android app with a route planner and a Movia timetable.

I love the mouseover effect. It is interactive and nice to play more than once.

But we also know about the problems with drunkenness on public transport. There is no difference with irresponsible behavior in a bus or in a bar.

My second complaint is that public transport is recommended for everyone after a night out, not only for barflies.