Australian road-safety PSA slows to a crawl

Like all right-minded people, I prefer my road-safety PSAs dark and disturbing, full of broken bodies, crushed cars and tortured tales of tragedy. Such messages have (pardon the pun) impact! Alas, there's a trend toward more thoughtful auto-safety spots, exemplified by last year's lauded "Embrace life" PSA. That clip was crafted by crumpet-dunking Brits, and I'd hoped it was an aberration. But now the Aussies have gone soft, too, with the Road Safety Council of Western Australia bidding us to "Enjoy the ride" (wasn't that Nissan's line?) in a three-minute clip from 303 Group that's so pansy-poetic and unrelentingly uplifting, it's a Down Under downer that will drive folks to dreamland. We're told to take things slow and appreciate life and the road. At one point, we're advised, in a half-whispered hypnotic narration, to breathe ... breathe. Is this a Lamaze class? (It can't be Le Mans at this plodding pace.) What's the deal, mates? It's fine to advocate slowing down on freeways, but can you get this somnambulant spot moving? Sure, speed kills. But it's equally dangerous to fall asleep at the wheel.

Filed under 303 Group, Australia, Gianatasio, Road safety
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This ad will leave you wretchedly depressed

We haven't seen a truly appalling road-safety PSA in a while. Oh wait, here's one now from those reliable shockvertisers at the Transport Accident Commission in Victoria, Australia. It may or may not improve your safety on the road, but it is guaranteed to ruin your day! It stars a woman who didn't know anything about curtain airbags when she could have used them most—before an accident that left her brain damaged. There's no more information about the woman in the ad, on the YouTube channel, or anywhere online—which really ratchets up the exploitative vibe. She's reduced to being the Brain Damaged Person Who Terrifies You. TAC has been down this road before. They've tried humor (notably with last year's "Don't be a dickhead" campaign) but they always come back to high-school driver's-ed style scare tactics. Looks like the success of England's "Embrace Life" spot (13.5 million YouTube views and counting) hasn't changed the category much at all.

Filed under Australia, Nudd, Road safety
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Town called Speed changes name for safety

It's usually a bit pathetic when towns rename themselves as part of a marketing campaign. These stunts date back to at least the 1950s, when the New Mexico town of Hot Springs changed its name to Truth or Consequences as part of a promotion by the NBC radio show of that name. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble, Halfway, Ore., changed its name to Half.com in a stunt dreamed up by that Web site. (It became Oregon's poorest town the following year.) And in 2005, Clark, Texas, agreed to become DISH, Texas, in exchange for a decade of free DISH satellite TV for the residents (all 218 of them). Now, a small town in Australia is changing its name, but for a good cause. As part of a state road-safety campaign, Speed agreed to change its name to Speedkills—if it got 10,000 likes on Facebook. Well, it's more than doubled than goal, and the change is going ahead. Check out the appeal video below, which nicely uses the town's quaint charm to urge motorists to slow down—on the roads and in life. Via Adland.

Filed under Australia, Nudd, Road safety
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Montana ad verifies you can drink and horse

This spot from the Montana Department of Transportation is having some unintended consequences among that state's drunk population. The ad, by Partners Creative in Missoula, urges bar patrons to get a "sober friend" to drive them home—like, metaphorically speaking, a horse. But Montanans are taking it literally. Helena police chief Troy McGee knew there would be trouble when his station was flooded with calls about whether drunk horseback riding is actually legal. Guess what? In Montana, it is! (Under state law, you can't be arrested for DUI if your vehicle is moved by "animal power." You also can't get a DUI on a bicycle or in a wheelchair.) MDT director Jim Lynch is giving viewers the benefit of the doubt, telling the Helena Independent Record: "They absorbed the message. They got it." No, Jim. No, they did not.

Filed under Animals, Kiefaber, Partners Creative, PSAs, Road safety
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Safe-driving video captures car-crash horror

Brazilian artist and student Uirá L'Amour put together this video—which isn't an ad, but could easily work as a road-safety PSA—as a graduation thesis. It's probably the most visually interesting safe-driving video we've seen. For kicks, contrast it with the most visually pathetic safe-driving video ever—the one with the exploding killer burger from Colenso BBDO in New Zealand. Via Jalopnik.

Filed under Nudd, Road safety, Student work
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Drive drunk, have romance with jail inmates

Ad agency FoxP2 takes an unexpected tack in this South African anti-drunk-driving campaign. This isn't your typical category PSA. There are no blood-splattered operating theaters, mangled bodies or ghosts of crash victims haunting those responsible for their deaths. Instead, a bunch of middle-aged guys film dating messages. The punch line is memorably chilling. Look, if you want to go out with these guys, you'll have to wear stripes and get into the bar scene, OK? They'll capture your heart. There's really no escape. Via Ads of the World.

Filed under Africa, FoxP2, Gianatasio, PSAs, Road safety
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Bartender embodies a drunk driver's future

In the spirit of freaky ads, here's the latest anti-drunk-driving message from Think!, the British road-safety campaign. It shows a bartender who asks a patron what he'd like to have—and then suddenly inhabits various frightening characters that the drinker will face if he's caught drunk driving, from the police officer to his boss at work. Extremely creepy, and with a tour de force acting performance by the bartender.

Filed under Europe, Nudd, Road safety
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YouTube ad of the year: Sussex driving spot

The inaugural YouTube Ad of the Year, honored at the Campaign Media Awards last week, is an old favorite of ours: the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership's famous 90-second road-safety PSA, released last January. See the ad below. (You can also watch a more widescreen version here.) The award is given to "the most creative and engaging ad on YouTube in the past 18 months." As we mentioned in our original writeup, the Sussex spot is fairly unique in the safe-driving category, in that it avoids shock tactics like mangled bodies, piercing screams and heart-wrenching sobs in favor of a life-affirming message. The damn thing doesn't even show a car. Yet it's a quite beautiful piece of film, and packs an emotional wallop all its own.

Filed under Europe, Nudd, PSAs, Road safety
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New Zealand to guy drivers: Stay in mantrol

Here's a pretty high-concept safe-driving campaign from New Zealand. It centers on a place called "mandom," a giant metaphorical house (visually reminiscent of HBO's Voyeur) where men control everything. But as the narrator tells us, men are not fully in control of one thing—their driving. As he slides down a pole to the basement, where there's an eerie car-wreck scene, he tells us the best way to exert "mantrol" while driving is to recognize the things you can't control, such as the road, the weather and other drivers. In other words, you're not really in control at all, so and slow the hell down. It's sort of confusing, actually. The client puts it this way: "A big part of mastering any skill is knowing your own limits. This campaign stresses that part of being a great driver is knowing when to pull back." The main TV spot is below. Two previous teasers are posted after the jump. Via The Inspiration Room.

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DUI morphs social butterfly into social leper

Heading out for a night on the town? Be careful, or you'll end up single, broke and saddled with community service, according to this new Web-only PSA by the Texas Department of Transportation. "Happy Hour FAIL" lets you watch a drunk driver's social life fall apart via social media, with a style inspired by Apple's "There's an app for that" ads. It's a welcome departure from the depressing gorefests we're used to seeing in DUI spots, and the snappy pace kept my interest throughout the two-minute clip. And while this guy's life leaves little to envy, I have to admit I'm jealous that his Facebook has a "Dislike" button. Is that option only available to Facebook users who've done jail time?

Filed under Alcohol, Griner, PSAs, Road safety, Social media
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Fake girl plays in traffic to scare bad drivers

Here's a bizarre campaign allegedly promoting safe driving. Starting next Tuesday, drivers on 22nd Street in West Vancouver, Canada, will be startled by a 3-D image of a girl chasing a ball in the street. The girl is an optical illusion, but the drivers won't know that. They will react as though she were real. Officials say if you are driving at the posted speed limit of 30 kmph, you will be able to stop in time. And if you are not? They don't really get into it, though you'd have to think it might involve braking, shouting, swerving, swearing, sidewalk hopping and possibly actual-people hitting. Let's hope the children at the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School, which is said to be very close by, have been advised to avoid this particular road for the time being. Via Time's NewsFeed.

Filed under Canada, Nudd, Road safety
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New Zealand ad warns of bad burger drivers

Clemenger BBDO in New Zealand put together some new road-safety PSAs that are awfully goofy, yet find a novel way of communicating the potentially deadly consequences of driving while eating, applying makeup or using mobile gadgets. Four spots (one below, three more after the jump) show cars in violent slow-mo crashes with a mobile handset, an iPod, a cosmetics compact and even a hamburger—with the works! The effect is more compelling than it sounds (OK, the burger spot is pretty damn cheesy, in more ways than one), and the campaign wisely avoids the gut-wrenching mutilation imagery so common to the genre. The super-cool, low-gliding compact looks like a UFO. (Colliding with one of those isn't too healthy, either.) The burger is much deadlier if you eat it, especially if special sauce is involved.

Filed under BBDO, Gianatasio, New Zealand, PSAs, Road safety
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This drunk-driving PSA ends with a bang

Even in the oft-jarring, frequently sickening category of road-safety PSAs, Advance Advertising in Jakarta manages to shock with this 45-second effort for broadcaster QTV. You could complain that the buildup lasts too long, or that similar approaches have been used in ads before. Still, there's no denying the brutal impact of the final frames. They present a high-caliber metaphor for friends who let friends drink and drive, delivering the message that such "friends" might as well be holding guns to folks' heads and pulling the trigger. (Thank god for the violent ending, because before that, the party was a real drag.) By the way, I'm hosting a little bash this weekend, and all my friends are invited. Open bar! It'll be a real blast. Via Ads of the World.

Filed under Gianatasio, Indonesia, Road safety
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French add to ghastly road-safety hit parade

Lowe Strateus has delivered another gory instant classic in the world of road-safety advertising: the five-minute spot below, titled "Unbearable," for France's Sécurité Routière. Last we checked in with this agency and client, they were using fancy reverse chronology to save a guy—and his amputated leg—from a drunk-driving accident. This new spot also plays around with time, juxtaposing a gruesome car accident on a Saturday night with a police officer's visit to a mother's home the next morning. It's all in French, but you don't need any translation. It's nicely shot, and suitably off-putting, but the question remains: Do shock tactics like these do anything to change teenagers' behavior? Via Adrants.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Europe, Lowe, Nudd, Road safety
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iPhone harmed in making of safe-driving ad

This safe-driving PSA by Wasserman + Partners for the Insurance Corp. of British Columbia goes too far, even by the increasingly horrific standards of the genre. First, we see an overturned car and blood splashed amid wreckage on the pavement. Tame so far. Then we zoom in and see (if you've got a weak constitution, you might want to stop reading) a close-up of an iPhone with a cracked screen! What monsters dredged up that sick image of the world's sweetest cell phone lying in ruins? Ah, the Canadians, naturally. Forget the paramedics, somebody call a Mac Genius, stat! I hope that driver had AppleCare. As for canceling the phone plan, forget it. Those ghouls at AT&T will send the bill to your grave. I'll assume the iPad was snugly strapped into a child-safety seat and unharmed. Oh god, wasn't it!? Via Osocio.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Canada, Gianatasio, PSAs, Road safety, Wasserman + Partners
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Safe-driving ads spray you with blood again

We've enjoyed a break lately from the horrific blood-and-guts school of road-safety advertising. In particular, we had that beautiful 90-second seatbelt PSA from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership in England, which was uplifting and totally brains- and intestines-free. Of course, it couldn't last. Check out these three print ads for the Bangalore Traffic Police by Mumbai agency the Mudra Group. Mmm, splashy!

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Asia, Nudd, PSAs, Road safety
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Ogilvy turns bar tabs into drunk-driving ads

Here's an interesting street-level campaign from Ogilvy Brazil to fight drunk driving. Working with bars, the agency came up with a machine that spit out wildly inflated bar tabs, ambushing patrons with charges of up to $73,000 for the booze they just sucked down. Upon closer examination, the bills actually featured an itemized list of medical costs associated with a drunk-driving accident. The video case study below shows customers' reactions caught on hidden camera by Hungry Man's Paulo Gandra. Ogilvy Brazil is doing lots of this kind of stuff lately. Check out this recent campaign for Burger King, in which the agency photographed patrons waiting in line and printed their photos on Whopper wrappers—another way to personalize the "Have it your way" positioning.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Brazil, Nudd, Ogilvy, PSAs, Road safety
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Australia urges drivers not to be 'dickheads'

Victoria, Australia, has launched the oddest safe-driving campaign of the year—doing away with the blood and guts and offering instead some offbeat humor and a refreshingly on-point tagline: "Don't be a dickhead." A bunch of online spots (three posted below, six more after the jump) warn you about the weird, unforeseen consequences of driving like a dickhead. Among them: Ginger-haired angels will get their wings; Twitter and Facebook will be turned off; and you risk living the rest of your life with a giant pole sticking out of your stomach. A couple of the ads also imagine what would happen if surgeons and air-traffic controllers talked on the phone while working—like you do while driving. Naturally, the campaign is already drawing criticism. The hope, obviously, is that young people will connect with this comical stuff more than the gory stuff. At the very least, they're probably more likely to spend time with this campaign, and not feel like they're being preached to. Via Jalopnik.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

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Filed under Australia, Nudd, Road safety
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Motorcyclists are people too, says U.K. PSA

The U.K. Department of Transport's THINK! campaign produced this pretty cool spot telling drivers to watch out for motorcyclists. Research suggested that drivers who personally know a biker are more respectful of motorcycles on the road—hence the garish neon signs, which make it seem like you know these people. At highway speeds, they're also a much safer method of introducing oneself than handshakes. Plus, they provide much-needed illumination, since none of the bikers seem to have reflectors or other safety lights. All kidding aside, there's a certain Walter Hill quality to the camerawork and setting that I really liked, and AMV BBDO did a really good job of communicating the human element of this advisory without excessive sentimentalism. Now, if someone could only ship those big signs to Baltimore and strap them to pedestrians.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Filed under BBDO, Europe, Kiefaber, PSAs, Road safety
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Another safe-driving ad turns back the clock

We've got a mini-trend in road-safety advertising: stories told in reverse. This spot, by Lowe Strateus for Securite Routiere in France, opens with a wrenchingly realistic hospital scene (Christ, the guy lost a leg!) and then tracks back to a few hours earlier, when the driver avoids his fate by choosing to spend the night at a friend's house. It's a powerful twist on a theme explored in last year's New Mexico PSA with the drunk driver in jail visited by his dead daughter, setting a flashback in motion. The U.S. spot is more jarring because its message is so bleak and final. The French clip offers a way out, if folks act responsibly in the decisive moment. But then, the French ad has the bloody stump! OK, let's call it even.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Europe, Freaky, Gianatasio, Lowe, PSAs, Road safety
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U.K. safe-driving ad beautiful, not gruesome

So, this is definitely worth a look. It's a new 90-second road-safety PSA from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership in England, and it doesn't feature a single mangled body, piercing scream or heart-wrenching sob. The car doesn't exist. The family isn't even outdoors. And yet it's just as emotionally powerful, if not more so, than all the blood and guts that's the category's stock in trade. Not to mention, it's beautifully, beautifully shot. Can they get this to air in New Zealand, too? Read lots more at Osocio.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Europe, Nudd, PSAs, Road safety
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Hear from the drunken idiots in MADD's ads

Self-conscious cheapness and intentional irony do not always a good campaign make. Such is the case with this well-intentioned but off-target campaign for Mothers Against Drunk Driving from TBWA\Toronto and Holiday Films director Adam Massey. See four spots here. The cheap-jack Stayin' on the Road talk-show setup feels forced. The guests' "tips" on how to successfully drive drunk—taking underused back roads and always driving in a straight line no matter what—are, of course, ludicrous. But the bland presentation doesn't make them sound nearly dangerous enough, and they almost seem like serious suggestions. Now, if the guests had been realistic and unsettlingly rendered corpses explaining their strategies—OMG, then we'd have PSAs to reckon with! Still, Iggy Pop should watch these ads. With Lord knows what racing through his system, he should probably just hand the wheel to the other dummy in the car.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Canada, Gianatasio, MADD, PSAs, Road safety, TBWA
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The Pope thanks you for not driving buzzed

Holiday safe-driving PSA season is in full throttle. First, we had that great ad from New Mexico. Now, here's a spot from Mullen for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Ad Council. It shows a gal next door, Rachel, receiving honors from the Pope and the Dalai Lama for not driving buzzed. (Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the 30-second version, though standing so close to him seems more like a punishment to me.) In the big picture, do we really want to be grandiosely rewarding folks for not driving while intoxicated—i.e., for not behaving like selfish assholes? Maybe people should refrain from driving buzzed because, I dunno, it's the right think to do? Also, this high-powered talent might be put to better use. Seeing the Terminator all remorseful after getting drunk and mowing down several of the world's top spiritual leaders? Now that would be a PSA!

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Ad Council, Gianatasio, Mullen, PSAs, Road safety
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In drunk-driving spot, there's no going back

The blood and gore of a thousand Australian PSAs can't match the intensity of this anti-drunk-driving spot by VWK in Albuquerque for the New Mexico Department of Transportation. This is almost a can't-miss category: The subject matter lends itself to powerful messages and stirring imagery. Yet, so much has been done, it's difficult to find a fresh approach. Well, we've found it here! Director Sean Broughton brilliantly shifts into reverse, starting at the story's end—which, in another twist, is not the accident itself. This method is jarring and unexpected enough to force us to consider the too-familiar car-crash scenario in a fresh light. Placing the bright party scene at the end deepens the sense of loss. The dead girl's palor is all the more upsetting because she seems sweet and almost shy as she speaks a single word to her father and sets the quick-cut flashback in motion. There's no hope of reversal. Her face will haunt his nightmares—and perhaps ours. Sobering. Via Ads of the World.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Freaky, Gianatasio, PSAs, Road safety, VWK
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Australia celebrates brutal road-safety PSAs

No one does horrifying safe-driving PSAs quite like the Australians. And now, to celebrate 20 years of making people feel sad and sick in the name of the public good, Victoria's Transport Accident Commission (with help from Grey Melbourne) has put together this greatest-hits music-video montage of nasty, depressing and brutal clips from its most disturbing commercials. It starts off a little slow, but really picks up around the one-minute mark. Death, despair, blood, guts, tears—it's all here! Relive all your worst nightmares this Christmas as you sing along to R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts." And remember to drive safely out there.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Australia, Grey, Nudd, PSAs, Road safety
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