After South Australia Police underwent extensive research into the consequences of mobile phone distractions on the road, it asked creative agency NATION to consider the use of humour in its latest campaign.
A new approach to the crises was required to cut-through and dial down the distractions; one both entertaining and educational.
The agency fully embraced the findings, and relied on humour to plead the SA public to ‘stop flirting with death’ in its new work for SAPOL.
“A range of past distraction-style road safety campaigns were shown to participants and their responses suggested exploring more humourous approaches and showcasing consequences without depicting exaggerated crashes,” NATION head of copy Katheryn Korczak told AdNews.
The inspiration to use humour to drive awareness also came about as often too many visuals of blood and carnage in road safety ads can cause people to distance themselves, switch off and become desensitised to the issues at hand, Korczak says.
“Plus, most distraction-based crashes are caused by those in the age ranges of 20-29 and then 30-39, which meant we were targeting a younger audience that’s notoriously hard to engage.
“That’s why the creative avoided a paternalistic approach and instead used humour as the device to capture their attention and increase the chances of shareability among the demographic.”
The creative process was interactive and fun, Korczak says.
Once the agency had the line ‘Stop flirting with death’ and the image of Grim on the phone, it knew the concept was distinctive and fulfilled its measure of strategic creativity.
There was the option for NATION to craft the idea in a more serious way, but the team knew it wouldn’t be as strong in landing the message and being memorable.
“It then all came to be through lots of discussions around scenarios and how the character would be brought to life in terms of how he looked, where he lived and what he liked,” she says.
“Initially, we didn’t want to do an ad with a person holding a phone in a car or have a crash at the end, but we realised that the middle we were creating in between those bookends was so different that the set-up and pay-off were vitally important for the whole thing to work.”
One of the biggest hurdles Korczak found was when the team imagined Grim doing something funny or outrageous, but it didn’t have a home in the ads.
“We made sure we always came back to the phone and its place in the communication because ultimately the way people interact with theirs is why the campaign exists,” she says.
Humour in advertising could be the antidote to the dark clouds of client and consumer sentiment.
After four years of pushing against economic headwinds, falling consumer spending and the depressing cloud of COVID years, creatives have turned to humour, like SAPOL and NATION have with Stop flirting with death.
A strong client-agency relationship and relevance to brand is essential to navigating the subjective nature of a humorous brief, and being effective for a serious topic to resonate.
Humour can be highly effective for a serious topic if it makes the audience feel something and then causes them to question their actions, NATION creative director Nick Brz says.
“We knew this campaign was a great opportunity for us to intrigue the target market and encourage them to think about the issue from another perspective.”
As the story unravels, the light-hearted nature gets people to let their guards down, empathise with the characters and lean into the story.
It all adds to the building misdirection, he says, where the ending suddenly feels abrupt and shocking with the serious consequences being a stark contrast to the humour.
“Of course, shock and fear-based ads can be very successful behaviour change tactics in the category. In fact, South Australia Police have used a variety of approaches over the years – shock/fear, enforcement, statistics, testimonials of real people and stories, social consequences as well as humour.”
For Brz, they all have their place. It depends on several factors as to which is used at the time, including the appetite of the audience.
South Australia Police is currently running a range of campaigns that target these emotions, so the agency knew it had to give drivers something unexpected for the message to cut through.
To ultimately reduce mobile phone use on roads, there are numerous metrics used to determine campaign performance that are measured through quantitative research, including campaign reach, message take-out and movement through the behaviour change process as applied by the Prochaska and DiClemente's model, Brz says.
“The goal is to reach or exceed the 80% awareness benchmark for the campaign, along with increasing compliance among drivers to stay off their phones.
“And it’s not just GPS, music and messages that are the problem, that’s why there are other parts of the campaign that tackle issues like people shopping and using social media platforms while driving.”
Observing changes in the volume of mobile phone expiations is another indication of greater good behaviour, as well as less ‘inattention/due care’ fatalities and distraction-related casualties, he says.
“Mobile phone detection cameras become operational later this year, which will provide greater data around this topic.
“Demerit points and monetary fines messaging is already out in the market as part of the campaign’s deterrence component, bringing even more data to evaluate.”
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