Your head is like a fragile egg

Bronze Lion in Cannes in the category Media.
It is not the first time a egg is used as a metaphor for our head. The Swiss accident insurance fund (Suva) is promoting the use of bicycle helmets. This is not compulsory in Switzerland. The start of the cycling season in spring coincides with Easter. Painted eggs are exchanged at Easter in Switzerland. 200,000 real eggs were used as advertising materials for this campaign.

A human face was printed onto the 200,000 real eggs in an elaborate printing process. The following message could be read on the reverse: “Your head is fragile. Wear a bicycle helmet.”
The quota of people wearing bicycle helmets in Switzerland reached a record in 2007: from 30% to 39%. An increase of + 9%. The increase in previous years was + 1% to 1.5%.

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Comments

This “Cannes series” are really interesting. Wonderful ads!

I take issue with this.

Promoting the use of cycle helmets has limited benefits for road safety, and actually forces the use of bicycles down… which is actually worse for public health. You’ll live at least two years longer if you cycle, whereas a cycle helmet is very unlikely to save your life.

See this article, and others
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/309/6953/541/a

reuben:

While that author brings up some good points about the inconsistencies in comparing helmet wearing vs. not-wearing riders, the extension that promoting helmet usage somehow discourages people from riding is fallacious.  The idea of institutionalizing a LAW REQUIRING helmets, may in fact, cause a decrease in ridership, but simple promotion does not. 

As for the effectiveness of a helmet to ‘save your life’-- it’s a minimal monetary investment and not much of a time commitment to potential reduce brain injury/death in a multitude of situations.