Texting While Driving Advert

I work in advertising and believe in both the power of a good ad and the limitations. Shock ads can work but are often mishandled and end up just being shocking to shock. Shock quickly turns to boredom.

I don't think that is the case here. I think this could be an incredibly powerful piece.

[snippety snip]

To all the people here who say that it won't change anything, I say it won't change everything. No ad could possibly convince everyone to do anything. Advertising's influence is limited. But run correctly, this ad could influence some people. That is a step in the right direction.

Dale, I'm sure that that often applies in advertising in a public service function. However, there are certain psychological factors at play here that cause people to do things like texting while driving, some of which are the same ones that cause people to get mobile phones in the first place (panic about the time lost while driving, boredom while driving, fear of being alone in public places, status, wanting to demonstrate multi-tasking ability, fear of being left behind, and so forth--it's a heady mixture of motivations.

If you really want to influence people to change such complex behaviour, you need to address at least some of these factors. Shock tactics will work with those people who are easily shocked--but not with people who go to see horror films on Fridays for fun. It's a bit like traffic calming--it tends to have an effect on people who are careful drivers, anyway. The others either get 4x4s, take different routes, or learn techniques to drive over vertical featureslike humps or cushions. There is always some kind of benefit from such campaign, but it tends to be low-hanging fruit, and the great drawback is that once the funding available for measures is used up for something like this, there is none left, and erroneous assumptions about the efficacy of such campaigns may lead to less benefit in the long run.

If there was something that worked really well, we would have found it by now.