So This is Research? That's Cool With Me

So it's all systems go over here in DIT. The Big Project, as it is commonly referred to, is in full swing. A lot of the fun stuff like choosing a name for our agency has been done and now it's time to get stuck into the nitty gritty of the details of the project. First on the agenda: Research - Is that a mighty cheer I hear rumbling in the distance?

Luckily for me I'm a copywriter so instead of trawling through business reports and lengthy transcripts of interviews and focus groups a lot of my research involves doing something I spend a lot of my time doing already - looking at ads. Oh what a troubled life I lead. You could spend days on end looking at road safety ads from around the world and only see a small percentage of them. There are so many ads out there that are trying to convince people to drive carefully on the roads and quite a range of techniques are employed in order to get the message across. Unsurprisingly, attempting to shock audiences is the most common one, although not always the best.

As with all advertising there are some truly inspiring road safety ads out there, then there are some decent enough campaigns and of course there are some absolute shockers. An honorable mention in this last category has to go to the 'Don't be a Dickhead' campaign from the Transport Accident Commission in Victoria, Australia (there are a series of ads there if you fancy torturing yourself). I like the angle they've taken and I think being slightly abusive and derogatory towards people who drive dangerously or do stupid things when driving is a tactic that could be used more often but in this case they've taken a decent idea and done everything in their power to make sure it results in a truly awful series of ads. That takes a lot of work so fair play to them, they should be proud.

But now, for some road safety ads that I did like. I've already posted Enjoy The Ride from the Safety Countil of Western Australia before so I won't take up precious blog space with it but I think it's a beautiful ad, everything about it just works.

Then there's this little beauty from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership in the UK which proves that you don't have to shock and disturb your audience to create an incredibly impactful ad.



I also love this one from the Transport Accident Commission in Victoria (so they CAN make good ads). To be honest if watching this doesn't force you to think about your driving habits then I don't know what will.



This last one is from Brazil and while it's not the most amazing idea ever it is a really simple and clever idea used to make a very simple point: Never drink and drive.



I could go on and on here but I'll leave it at that. What's really interesting is to see how advertisers are using new technologies as part of road safety campaigns. There are a whole bunch of great new apps and digital campaigns using unique and clever techniques to encourage people to slow down on the roads or not use mobile phones while driving or whatever the particular issue may be. This is an excellent example from OVK in Belgium.

The challenge for us in DIT is to create ads that will be just as meaningful and impressive as these and that will ultimately change the way people act when on the road. No problem at all.

Now make sure you drive safe y'all.

As a little aside: Over the next few weeks I've got Portfolio Night on 26th May and the presentation for this project on 9th June so I hope to be meeting various creative directors and general ad-people from Dublin who will be just bursting to give me (and my classmates) a job. To remind them that they want to hire me (as if they would forget) I've gone and kitted myself out with some fancy business cards - a pretty unimportant and dull issue for most people but I've never had my own business cards before so allow me to feel important for just a few moments. Anyway, being a copywriter my design skills are, well, limited at best, so I got some (I say some, I mean a lot) help with the design from Curious Design who are a great new design company here in Dublin. They were so so helpful and even though it was a tiny project for them they really paid attention to detail and helped me to get a design that I was happy with. Why not pop over to their site, see the kind of things they do and have a read of their blog while you're there?