BBDO Singapore pranks HELP University students to drive home the drink-driving message

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BBDO - HELP.jpgBBDO Singapore has launched an eye-opening Chinese New Year holiday anti drink-driving awareness campaign for HELP University. It’s strategically targeted at students and has launched in time to mark the peak of drink-driving, which occurs around the festive season.

College students are responsible for 28% of all alcohol-related accidents in developed countries.

To demonstrate the absurdity of drinking and driving, HELP University gave its students a first-hand experience of this reckless habit. Filmed using hidden cameras, the campaign featured a whisky-drinking taxi driver, startling students on their way home after lectures. Their spontaneous reactions were then captured and replayed to reinforce how ridiculous the act of drink-driving actually is.

HELP.jpgHEP2.jpgThere is also an online element at the end of the video where students can take an anti drink-driving pledge on drinkdrivedontmix.org – a site which helpfully features the downloadable contact details of several local taxi companies.

Adam Chan, Executive Director, HELP International Corporation believes it is important to send out a clear message that will ensure students are more vigilant when driving. “Drinking and driving poses a potential hazard to those pedestrians and other drivers on the road. HELP University feels creating awareness by means of normal media messages may not be as powerful as a video, that can go viral on Facebook and social media, thus attracting a larger, younger tech-savvy audience,” said Chan.

Ronald Ng, Chief Creative Officer, BBDO and Proximity Singapore remarked, “HELP University’s continued commitment to their students’ wellbeing inspired this idea. We wanted to ‘put a mirror in front of the students’ to literally demonstrate what they might be doing during this season of partying and drinking”.

This is BBDO’s follow up to the successful 2008 ‘Wheelchair’ which was the 6th most awarded ‘Alternative & Innovative media campaign’ according to the 2008 Big Won Report.