KETCHUM RAAD MIDDLE EAST Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Results and Effectiveness
The sculpture made its way around Dubai campuses. In just 7 days, thousands got the message. The press covered it, as well as TV and radio stations. Over 500 people forwarded it to their friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest via the QR code, reaching exponentially more people across their social media networks.
Creative Execution
We created a Crash Text Dummy, a towering sculpture in the shape of the popular text shortcut “FYI”, made purely from smashed car parts. For several days, we visited scrapyards, looking through hundreds of smashed cars for parts that we then welded together into a 1.8m tall sculpture. A smashed window, a bent wheel, a ruptured car door, a burnt seat, a ripped teddy bear—each conjured up an eerie vision of its path to the junkyard.
A banner next to the sculpture contained a QR code that when scanned, prompts the youth to post a message on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. This includes a Don’t Text & Drive appeal, an image of the sculpture, and a link to the Nissan Safety Page.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea
UAE residents are 7 times more likely to die in car accidents, compared to the UK. One of the leading causes is texting and driving. Even after losing a national football star and renewed police enforcement, the number of accidents continued to rise.
Nissan’s innovations are designed to keep drivers safe. But even the most advance technology is powerless when drivers are distracted. We decided to raise awareness among the highest-risk segment—college students. We needed to prove to young drivers that texting and driving are a deadly mix, and shake them out of their apathy.
We combined the language of texting with the consequences of texting.