Publicis Worldwide was recently awarded ‘best of show’ at this year's Brisbane Advertising and Design Club (BADC) Awards in recognition of the ‘Lag Kills’ campaign.
The brief for the campaign was created by Queensland Government Transport and Main Roads, to portray responsible road safety.
The campaign featured an online video game stream on Twitch. The agency challenged an influential Aussie streamer, TJBirrd, to play Minecraft with 300ms ping, the same reaction delay to driving with 0.05 blood alcohol content.
This resulted in a mass of deaths throughout the game, further sparking positive conversations around the dangers of drink driving.
The campaign is currently live across social platforms.
Ryan Petie, executive creative director, Publicis Worldwide, spoke to AdNews about the motivation behind the campaign, explaining young male drivers are hard to reach via traditional marketing prospects.
Petie: “Young male drivers are really hard to reach by traditional marketing. And they’re unfortunately over-represented in fatal road crashes. 1 in 3 admit to still driving even when they know they’re over the limit.
“We needed to find a new way to influence this behaviour in our traditional Drink Driving campaign.”
Petie went on to discuss the creative strategies that were implemented that solidified the success of this campaign.
He said: “86% of Australians aged 15-24 are gamers. So we partnered with Twitch and challenged influential Australian Twitch Streamer TJBirrd to play Minecraft with 300ms ping, which equates to the same reaction delay to driving at 0.05 blood alcohol content.
“This resulted in slower reaction time and repeated deaths – which got our message across – lag kills.”
The work was so effective in its approach and creative deployment that it took home the BACD award, ‘Best of Show’.
Panel chair and chair of judges Andy Flemming said: “This was one piece of work we just hadn’t seen before.
"This idea completely understands who it is talking to, the terminology they use, the world they live in, the media they consume and the games they play. It was just outstanding.”
The campaign: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1276222978
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