I’m not MADD about these ads

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is one of the major forces in social marketing around the impaired driving issue. However, they have also gained a reputation as being somewhat extremist and emotional when it comes to their anti-alcohol stance (for example, in their insistence that the US drinking age of 21 is necessary and support of “zero tolerance” alcohol enforcement.

This latest campaign, though, is neither extreme nor emotional. It’s just, well…

I don’t know what to call it, honestly. It looks like student work in a way, creative that’s trying too hard to be clever and failing to deliver anything thought-provoking or new. “Oh, drinking and driving kills? Who knew that cocktail could lead to bloodshed.”

I’m sorry to be so sarcastic, but it is such a shame to see money and effort wasted on a campaign that will probably not make much of an impact. MADD would be better off putting their budget into research, to try to harvest an insight that could actually get through to the people who are most at-risk of casual or occasional drunk driving.

Plus, the concept has been done much better on more than one occasion.

Two more executions after the break.

Related MADD posts:
- Broken Teens
- Amy, Jenny, Jeff and Lisa
- MADD
- Don’t make it a grad to forget

Comments

What strikes me as odd about MADD is that they still seem to be stuck in the Awareness stage of social marketing, when they should have moved beyond it in, say, the late 80s.