3 Ways with...Road Safety Ads

When it comes to the impact of advertising, nowhere is this more literally meant than in road safety ads, which are generally known for their violence and shock. However, there are other ways to make a road safety ad, as this week’s 3 Ways With… hopes to show.

1. Slow-Motion

The ‘money shot’ of any road safety ad is its final crash, that impact on metal-on-metal, or metal-on-tree that warns the viewer against whatever you are trying to warn them against. With a crash usually taking mere seconds, one school of road safety ads try to stretch this out as much as possible.

Securite Routiere: Shockwave

In this ad from La Chose Paris, the concept of the slow-motion crash is taken to an extreme. As two cars crash, the two drivers are thrown out of the windows, as are their friends, lovers, relatives, and everyone around them who will be affected by the crash.

Danish Road Safety Council: Choice

In a spin on this concept, slow-motion becomes standstill in this ad by Brandhouse. Two cars freeze in time, and the drivers get out to plead with each other for the lives of their children…

2. WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

…in fact, kids are a staple of the genre, keeping parents in line with a series of terrifying images of kids suffering. Ads can go way too far in doing this (just watch the below vid to see a toe-curling example), but the best ads manage to weigh parental peril with going too far.

DOE Road Safety: Classroom

…other ads, meanwhile, seem to get an almost sadistic glee out of laying waste to cute kids. None moreso than this infamous ad from LyleBailie International based on the idea that a classroom’s worth of children had been killed on roads that year.

TAC Road Safety: Puppet

A very different approach using kids from Clemenger BBDO. Instead of being memorable for any violence, it uses a puppetry rig to demonstrate how one generation’s bad driving habits impacts on the older generation, taking a more metaphorical approach to the genre.

3. Collage of Surprise

Alongside collages and kids, another form that road safety ads particularly like to use is what we like to call a ‘collage of surprise’, which comprises of a montage of moments that have nothing to do with driving that only show their relevancy at the last moment.

The Danish Road Safety Council: Breathe

As the title suggests, this ad by Bates/Y&R is based around the concept of breath, with moments including pre-birth breaths (because you are never that far from kids in a road safety ad), a man out of breath on a jog, and finally a man being breathalysed.

Think!: Don’t Get Caught Between

Across a decades-long partnership with the Department for Transport, AMV BBDO have all but invented what a road safety ad looks like, for better or for worse. This ad is definitely the former, with a mix of animation and live action showing things not to get between, from a falling piano and the floor to, finally, a lorry and a left turn.

 Click here to read more 3 Ways With... features, including our recent guide to the best of stop-motion.