The Recently Robbed Tourist’s Guide

Background

Secure Sentinel is an emergency service that protects overseas travellers’ belongings. If their cards, passport, luggage and phone are lost or stolen, all members need to do is make one simple phone call. Secure Sentinel will then take care of replacing the items quickly, allowing unlucky travellers to get on with their holidays.

Idea

Travelling overseas is all about enjoying exotic destinations. Seeing the sights. But were your credit cards, passport, luggage and phone to be stolen, it’d be a very different trip. To highlight the dire straits travellers could find themselves in without Secure Sentinel, credit card owners were sent a travel map with a difference: ‘The Recently Robbed Tourist’s Guide’. Instead of fabulous sights to see and swish hotels to check in to, the map pointed them towards public fountains to bathe in, park benches to sleep on, laundromats where they could ‘borrow’ clothes, etc.

Results

The piece lodged in late December 2010. Results are pending.

Our Thoughts

As far as I can see, there have been no studies linking humour with effectiveness in advertising. In her autobiography, Mary Wells claims that the brilliantly funny DDB commercials for Alka-Seltzer did not work, which is why she won the business. In fact, my online researches reveal a nest of planners all agreeing furiously that funny interferes with the message and detracts from effectiveness.

Now, I find this map funny. I think the copy has been written with a light touch. I think the brand behind it is trying to be pleasant rather than stubbing me on the chest with its finger telling me ‘You need me, because if…sorry, WHEN…you get robbed, you’ll be screwed.’

Frankly, I prefer pleasant to shouty finger-wagging and cannot believe I am alone. I await the results of this campaign with interest.