Whodunnit?

Background

Nine out of 10 drivers involved in fatal collisions with cyclists say they never saw them. So the agency was tasked with making drivers work harder at looking out for cyclists on the roads and streets of London as well as helping cyclists understand why they need to make themselves more visible.

Idea

People miss cyclists because their brains make it hard for them to pick them up in their field of vision; this is known as ‘attention blindness’. Being told this in advertising would usually sound like having a science lesson – and the viewer would switch off. But experiencing ‘attention blindness’ yourself is a different matter - as the agency discovered with their first successful viral, ‘Moonwalking Bear’. This second viral was a follow-up to that one and was designed to shock viewers into realising how easy it is not to notice things – like cyclists.

Results

The viral has been seen by more than 300,000 people to date, and continues to be talked about in other media.

Our Thoughts

At the Meribel festival in December, the ‘Moonwalking Bear’ campaign won a Gold for direct marketing and was loudly cheered by the audience. This is just as ingenious but may suffer from being a follow-up. The other thing about this campaign is that there seems to be someone at Transport for London whose job it is to big-up the ad as much as possible. He blogs and emails other bloggers and directs them to www.dothetest.com. That seems smart to me too. For a fraction of the cost of a TV spot, hire a guy to create an audience of millions for you. Besides which, it’s more than just an ad – it’s the gateway to a website about safety on busy roads.