A video produced by THINK! as part of its festive drink-drive campaign has been viewed more than 5m times on Facebook.
The video, produced in partnership with the LADbible social media and entertainment channel, shows a group of friends preventing their designated driver from drinking alcohol at the pub.
The driver wants to have one pint, but his friends deliberately continue to spill his drinks – before buying him a non-alcoholic drink.
At the end, the group ‘cheers’ each other with the caption ‘knock it on the head’ – in reference to one of the ways they have prevented the driver from drinking.
The video, which contains strong language and what might be considered by some as inappropriate behaviour, has been viewed 5.3m times on Facebook, attracting more than 57k likes and nearly 10k shares.
Warning: this video contains strong language.
A second campaign video, ‘Party Time’, champions the designated driver, which in this case is Dr Ofori – an opinionated Uber Driver played by Michael Dapaah, an English rapper, actor and comedian best known for portraying the fictional road rapper Big Shaq.
The video, which has been viewed more than 4m times, follows a group of mates on a night out with their Uber driver, who sticks to soft drinks while the others have drink alcohol.
On the journey home, the driver is forced to brake sharply to avoid a pedestrian on his mobile phone – with the driver highlighting his ‘ninja reflexes’ as a result of not having consumed any alcohol.
The overarching 2017 THINK! festive campaign puts forward the premise that ‘a mate doesn’t let another mate drink drive’, and depicts celebrity friendships including Ant and Dec, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and Rodney and Del Boy.
The campaign also features a personal video message from Kiss FM duo Rickie Haywood Williams and Melvin Odoom, which has received a more modest 10k views.
The video signals a move away from the traditional approach taken by the THINK! Campaign, which was outlined by Dawn Lauder, who heads up the marketing team at the DfT, at the National Road Safety Conference 2017.
Dawn Lauder told delegates that with road safety advertising becoming less noticed, it was time for a new approach to make THINK! more relevant at ‘moments that matter’ to young drivers and their passengers.
She talked about how young people value peer approval more than any other demographic, and are influenced by their peers and other ‘influencers’ including music artists and brands.
Dawn Lauder said: “We need to use these spheres of influence in order to get to the audience and need to create content our audience will seek out. It’s about tapping into film, movies, gaming – ‘moments that matter’.”
It’s been refreshing to see this new approach – these messages were shared on social media by my younger brother’s mates which just shows they’re reaching the right audience and prompting active engagement too. Well done Think!
Rhiannon Leeds, Lancashire
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