DraftFCB

This is out of the DraftFCB office in Johannesburg and is work they did for a client called Drive Alive South Africa. In South Africa over half of the deaths and injuries from car accidents are due to drinking and driving, which is twice the world average. I don't know why I am surprised by this; I didn't expect for South Africa to have so many designated drunk driving culprits. So in an effort to deter South Africans from driving under the influence, Draft set up a "realistic mobile road block," which they claim to have worked. I can imagine all the Oh S*#!s of people starting to get close to that, popping breath mints and practicing their backwards ABC's!

Not only is this a responsible ad, but the realness of the situation Draft imposed on the South African public makes the ad both inventive and effective. This is not the first time I have seen ads that teach the public a lesson in responsible behavior by essentially tricking them; the ComputerTan hoax formulated by McCann Erickson was a similar means of showing the public how stupid their behavior can be. Driving drunk is quite obviously a poor decision, but rather than beat this notion into the heads of kids with videos and red ribbon weeks at school, Draft took a more relevant approach to target the adult population. This shows the power of advertising; you can decide to make pictures for magazines with statistics and the traditional scare tactics of the "This could happen to you!" situations, or you can make people pee themselves at a fake checkpoint and really make them take a look at the decisions they are making...This is a whole new kind of scare tactics. I do wonder how many people drove by it and, upon realizing that it wasn't a real road block, felt violated, perhaps feeling like "you can't do that to me." Then again, I don't know that we have any rights, anywhere around the world, protecting us from fake situations??

After the drama of the "I wear no pants ad" DraftFCB did for the Super Bowl, I was a little worried for what other hot mess advertising they had done. This is some solid, creative work though, so I guess even if it is from Draft, I have to give credit where credit is due.