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Office of Highway Safety
Idiots. You Never See Them Coming.
Years of public awareness campaigns have worked: Over 90% of the general population wears their seat belt. But the last remaining holdouts are disproportionately young adult males (YAMs), who are not fans of authority. In fact, according to research, if you tell YAMs to do something, they do the opposite. Teenagers, amirite? So, how do you get a population of invincible bros tweaked up on Red Bull to slow down and buckle up?
The Strategy
We flipped the script. Instead of telling YAMs that they are bad drivers, we told them they need to buckle up … because other people are bad drivers. With a lighthearted, animated approach that poked fun at buckle-challenged dullards like “Daev” and Stu, we convinced YAMs that they need to buckle up, simply to avoid idiots on the road.
The Success
The campaign was so successful with our demographic that it went on a cross-country road trip. States like Tennessee began to adopt the creative and use the “it’s not you, it’s them” approach to address other teenage woes like speeding and drinking and driving. Soon, we had a host of characters teaching YAMs how to drive by (bad) example.
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