Two thirds of public help ‘drunk’ man drive in secretly-filmed Confused.com campaign
By Rich Leigh on Saturday, December 15, 2012
I’m very happy to be writing about this PR campaign, both because it’s one I personally worked on and, because this is the 500th published post on PRexamples.com since launching in late-January this year!
I’m chuffed to have hit such a milestone, considering how fickle I usually am with ideas and seeing them through. My MD Andy loves to point out that neither of us are completer finishers, you see.
Anyway, that little personal celebratory message aside, here’s a campaign for price comparison site Confused.com this month.
We were trying to come up with timely campaigns and with Christmas coming up, drink driving was on the agenda. Shannon Haigh (recently and very deservedly promoted to senior account manager) suggested a video similar to the ‘smoking kid’ campaign I wrote about here back in June, where we had an actor pretend to be drunk to see if the public would be willing to turn a blind eye to drink driving.
So, that’s exactly what we did – and the results were shocking. Watch the video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1daxgkN11Y
Of more than fifty people approached, just eight refused to help our ‘drunk’ actor into his car. More than two-thirds of people actually helped the slurring man into his car. If I’m honest, we expected the public to mostly ignore our would-be driver’s requests for assistance, his insistence that he was ‘only going down the road’ apparently enough to convince people that it’s OK to aid drink driving.
More than 7,000 people were arrested for drink driving last Christmas, so we know even more people are doing it. Logic dictates they’re not doing it unbeknownst to all friends and family, so that became the main message of the campaign:
“Don’t allow friends and family to drink and drive this Christmas”.
Given the public apathy on display in the video, it seems even more important to state something you’d otherwise hope people would already be doing.
It’s been very well received by campaigners, media and, importantly, the public, making this a campaign I’m very proud to have worked on.
If you’re interested in seeing the press release, click here.
Involved agencies:
