The Virtual Crash Billboard
DRIEA (Parisian Road Safety Authority)
Issue 45 | December 2017
Agency
serviceplan France
Creative Team
Global Chief Creative Officer Alexander Schill Creative Director Daniel Perez Art Director François Lesaint Copywriter Benjamin Coché Associate Creative Directors Franz Roeppischer, Lorenz Langgartner Senior Motion Designer Dennis Fritz
Production Team
Trinity Films, Producer Renaud Chabert Le Comptoir du Son, Sound Engineer Alexandre Poirier
Date
April 2017
Background
In France, and particularly in Paris and its suburbs, pedestrians could be careless when crossing the road. Some 4,500 pedestrians had been injured or killed simply by failing to pay attention as they crossed the road.
DRIEA, The Parisian Road Safety Authority, wanted to raise awareness of the dangers of stepping out into a road without thinking.
Idea
Nothing changed behaviours more effectively than a brush with danger.
And that insight led to the idea of making people experience the sudden, heart-stopping fear of being hit by a car but without actually being in any danger.
When someone was concentrating on their mobile phone and stepped out onto a pedestrian crossing while the red light was showing, the billboard made the loud sounds of a car braking violently.
A photograph of the startled jaywalker was taken automatically and displayed on a screen nearby with the message: Don't risk dying.
Results
Installed on a busy Paris street on March 22nd, it did not take long for the Virtual Crash Billboard to become a topic of conversation around the world, featuring on more than 15 TV shows, 100 global news platforms and an incalculable number of posts on social media.
The video had six million organic views within two weeks. It has subsequently been subtitled in many languages. Four months after the activation, there had been 80 million organic views, two million interactions in social media and 1.3 billion media impressions.
Our Thoughts
2,092 pedestrians were killed or seriously injured in London last year. All too often it's because they were so absorbed in their mobiles they were oblivious to the world beyond their tiny screens.
This is such a powerful idea, scaring people into changing their behaviours. No amount of dramatic, slo-mo commercials showing pedestrians being struck could have the same effect.
What is, in essence, a one-off, a prototype, was given breadth and scale by the video and the photos of alarmed Parisians, but it is an idea which, in audio only, could be taken to many other dangerous locations to save lives.