From One Second to the Next
AT&T
Issue 30 | March 2014
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer David Lubars Executive Creative Directors Erik Fahrenkopf LP Tremblay Creative Director/Copywriter Peter Albores Creative Director/Art Director Hunter Fine Executive Producer Julie Collins Agency Producer George Sholley Music Producer Melissa Chester
Production Team
Production Company Saville Productions Director Werner Herzog Director of Photography Peter Zeitlinger Line Producer Cliff Schumacher Executive Producer Rupert Maconick Producers Melanie Gagliano Toby Louie Composer Mark Degli Antoni
Other Credits
Account Team Lianne Sinclair Kristen Roche Allison Chait
Date
May 2013
Background
Over 100,000 crashes a year involve drivers who are texting. Seventy-five percent of teens say texting and driving is common among their friends. Texting behind the wheel is now the leading cause of death among teenagers, so it's even more dangerous than drunk driving. The goal of the campaign, then, was to inform young people of the dangers and to change behavior by demonstrating that no text is worth a life.
Idea
Legendary film director Werner Herzog was commissioned to make From One Second to the Next, a 35-minute documentary that would pull no punches.
Herzog took on four different cases of texting and driving – two perpetrators and two victims – to demonstrate the varied consequences.
The subjects included eight-year-old Xzavier, who was paralysed from the neck down when he was struck by a driver texting and driving, and Chandler Gerber, who killed three people while reading a text behind the wheel of his van.
Three 30-second TV spots acted as trailers, driving traffic to YouTube and to AT&T's It Can Wait landing page, where visitors could sign a pledge never to text and drive.
Results
The film racked up over one million YouTube views within 48 hours of its release. So far, it has been viewed nearly 3 million times. It attracted the attention of The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Reddit, and countless broadcast networks worldwide. Herzog himself was interviewed about the project by CNN. com, NPR, and the Associated Press, leading to millions in earned media.
The film was adopted as a teaching tool for police officers, highway safety organizations, and government institutions, who also helped distribute it to over 40,000 schools and driver- education programmes.
There have been more than four million pledges never to text and drive and half a million It Can Wait tweets.
There has been a positive statistical correlation between the It Can Wait campaign and the projected reduction in crashes with social-media sharing having the most impact. Source: http://blogs.att.net/consumerblog/story/a7793065#!
Our Thoughts
Texting and driving is an issue that has recently led to many innovative creative campaigns (such as the Samsung example on pages 60-61) but even in these digital times, what this shows is that sometimes film is still the way to go. Not a short film but 34 minutes of raw emotion and brutal honesty. And for those of you who suggest that no-one will watch branded content for longer than four minutes, here’s further proof people will, and do, engage with long-form content.
Yes, the campaign’s multi-media push led to the big numbers of pledges, shares and even being featured on Netflix, but money did not buy the film being adopted by 40,000 schools. Its power did. And that’s what will help the idea live on longer than other short- term shock campaigns, the fact that it is brilliantly conceived and crafted.
See the film at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BqFkRwdFZ0