Another Attempt at Cutting Road Deaths – VicRoads Controversial Campaign
April 1st, 2010 by Ingrid Cliff
Staying with our theme of no blood and gore road safety campaigns, Vic Roads has just released a series of ads with the tagline “Don’t be a Dickhead”. The tagline has copped a fair amount of flak, but the ads themselves are also gaining few friends.
Ad lines include “If you don’t wear your seatsbelt we will turn off Facebook” shown with a man smashing a computer with a hammer. “Every time you talk on your mobile phone while driving, a redhead gets his wings”,and this one.
Yes, these ads get a laugh (when they are not offending people), but will they change driving behaviour – my guess is they won’t. There is not enough social influence in there to dramatically change how people think or act.
If you want to have a look at the full series of ads check out the VicRoads You Tube Channel.
What do you think?
Ingrid Cliff
We put your business into words
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 9:08 am and is filed under Marketing writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 1st, 2010 at 10:12 am
Such a serious message, such bad delivery.
It does make wonder whether it is possible that they came up with this campaign knowing that it would have a negative reaction and in turn generate interest, and opinions on the topic and therefore create awareness?
But I think that might be giving them too much credit.
April 1st, 2010 at 10:39 am
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June 29th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Wow is this the first ever antiviral.. that is a an advertisement so lame that most people would be embarrassed to pass on!
Vicroads breaks the number one rule of interactive media… by disallowing comments on the youtube page it frustrates audiences even more and just makes it look like Vicroads and Downwind.media look like they want the campaign to be screened but not be heard.