The Government is airing up to 15 commercials - each a graphic
reconstruction of a fatal road accident - in a pounds 2 million
pre-Christmas blitz on drinking and driving.
Abandoning their usual tactic of a single high-impact film to underline
their message, transport ministers will deluge viewers with different
executions in an ’ambush and swarm’ strategy.
Police, members of the emergency services and accident investigators
play themselves in the commercials, all of which are based on actual
accidents.
They replicate police videos accompanied by harrowing radio messages
from officers reporting that they have discovered bodies smelling of
drink.
Each 30-second film from Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO ends with the
long-established ’Don’t drink and drive’ line, which amends itself to
’Don’t drink and die’.
Although no bodies are recognisable in the films, the Broadcast
Advertising Clearance Centre has ruled that none can be screened before
6pm and that some may have to be held until after the 9pm watershed.
They were written by Nick Worthington, art directed by Paul Brazier and
directed by Rupert Sanders for Outsider.
Unusually, the TV campaign is being extended into Loaded and FHM, in an
effort to cut drink-driving among 17- to 24-year-old men - the most
common offenders.
The writer, Tom Carty, and his art director, Walter Campbell, produced
the press ad - headed ’Some words of advice from a pisshead’ - in which
a ’lad’ suggests that mates out on the pull should nominate a driver to
go without a ’bevvy’.
