Drink driving campaigns have contributed to measurable reductions in road deaths across decades and multiple countries. The campaigns in this collection achieved those results not through information alone - drivers generally know the risks - but through creative work that made the consequences feel real, immediate, and personal. New Zealand's 'Mistakes' campaign, Australia's 'If you drink and drive, you're a bloody idiot', and the UK's most visceral road safety films created emotional moments that stayed with viewers long after the campaign ended.
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Tiny Bottles
- Volkswagen · McCarthy & Co.
The Volkswagen Tera goes further on less fuel, so the campaign translates efficiency into distance running, where staying hydrated normally means repeated water stops. Subverting the number of bottles a runner needs turns an abstract consumption figure into something physically legible.
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Eyes where you need them
- Volkswagen · Ogilvy South Africa
The new Amarok has a 360-degree system including a Terrain Camera that shows the ground beneath the vehicle, effectively eyes underneath. So the launch put eyes underneath as well, running outdoor placements built to be double-taken rather than read.
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If you’re tired, don't drive.
- KIA · Valor Socios de Marcas · 2021
Under five hours of sleep impairs a driver about as much as a blood alcohol level of 0.05 percent, which means exhaustion puts people on the road under the influence without them ever having had a drink. KIA used International Road Safety Day to make that equivalence explicit.
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Dominoes
- OSR
Working from a BuxumLunic script, the studio made three spots to make classical music appealing to a broad, non-specialist audience. Rather than treating it as high culture, the work sets out to give people the appetite to simply try it.
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We've Tried €verything
- Wallonie Securite routiere · Air Brussels · 2022
Wallonie Securite Routiere "We've Tried Everything". A road-safety spot making an urgent appeal for safer driving.
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Drive Safely
- DARS
"Drive Safely" for DARS: a warm, hopeful driver's face reminds motorists what waits at journey's end - a road-safety plea to get home to the people you love.
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Don't Selfie and Drive
- volkswagen · DDB México · 2015
DDB Mexico's road-safety campaign for Volkswagen targets a specifically modern distraction: taking a selfie behind the wheel. The insight: a selfie demands you look at yourself instead of the road, so don't selfie and drive names the vanity of the act as the danger, making the point that a photo isn
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Don't drink and drive
- opel · Y&R Rome · 2020
Opel sought to reinforce its road safety commitment by addressing drink-driving without relying on easily dismissed shock tactics. The campaign taps into the cultural truth that social drinkers view popular alcoholic beverages as friendly companions rather than lethal threats. To disrupt this compla
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It's not funny when it's forever
- IPTRAN · Artplan · 2015
Artplan's drink-driving campaign for IPTRAN sets a light, joking tone against a permanent consequence. The insight: a night out feels temporary and forgivable, but the damage from a crash is not, so the line it's not funny when it's forever collapses the gap between a moment's recklessness and a lif
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Total Mess
- Volkswagen · DDB Buenos Aires · 2019
Volkswagen Argentina's "Total Mess": driver-assistance features demonstrated not in futuristic simulations but in the places where driving is genuinely chaotic - no lights, no signs, no crossings. The insight: technology features are usually shown in sterile isolation; showing them surviving a real
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No matter how fashionable you are
- samsung · Cheil Worldwide · 2016
This road-safety campaign attacks phone use at the wheel on the terms of an image-conscious audience. The insight: people who'd never be seen doing something ugly still text while driving, so no matter how fashionable you are, using a mobile while driving is ugly reframes distraction as a style fail
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You'll never be surprised on road again
- volkswagen · DMG · 2015
DMG's campaign for Volkswagen's electronic brake assist sells safety as the absence of nasty surprises. The insight: the danger on the road is the thing you don't see coming, so a system that reacts before you can promises you'll never be caught off guard again, turning a technical feature into peac
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It's important to stop at the right moment.
- volkswagen · GMP Bucharest · 2015
GMP Bucharest sells the new Passat's City Emergency Brake on the value of good timing. The insight: most urban collisions come down to a fraction of a second too late, so it's important to stop at the right moment frames the automatic brake as the split-second judgement a distracted driver can't alw
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Belted Survivors
- nz transport agency · fcb auckland · 2020
Staunch young males, who see seatbelts as soft and unmanly, make up most of New Zealand's unrestrained crash deaths, though 40% would have survived belted. The insight: this rule-breaking audience tunes out safety PSAs but respects their peers, so real crash survivors wear their seatbelt wounds as b
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Buckle up your dreams. Baker
- inDrive · inlab · 2026
Three films for Kazakhstan, each walking a character through a 'museum of dreams' - the life they are driving toward, built as an exhibition - before a crash shatters the room. AI generation built the dream worlds and their destruction, cutting production cost roughly fivefold. The insight is that s
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Meet Graham
- Transport Accident Commission · Clemenger BBDO Melbourne · 2016
Road-safety authorities commissioned a sculpture of a human body redesigned to actually survive a car crash - a thickened skull, no neck, an airbag-like ribcage, knees that bend in every direction - and named him Graham. The insight is that cars have evolved for a century while the human body has no
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Hangman
- Observatorio National Road Safety · Neogama/BBH · 2016
Neogama/BBH turned the childhood game Hangman into a texting-and-driving warning. The insight: every word you type at the wheel is a gamble with your life, so spelling out a message letter by letter builds the hangman's gallows in parallel, making the point that don't-text-and-drive is not a game yo
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Speed Kills
- Western Cape Government · Y&R South Africa · 2016
In the Western Cape, a pedestrian is seriously injured or killed almost every day, usually by speed. The insight: the driver's foot on the accelerator is the exact instrument of harm, so Y&R's posters place a vulnerable, doll-like pedestrian directly beneath a foot pressing a pedal, making the every
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Secure your head before you ride
- Jordan Insurance Company · Y&R · 2016
Jordan Insurance's road-safety campaign attacks a false sense of security among riders. The insight: wearing a helmet with the buckle undone is no protection at all, so an open buckle helmet isn't a helmet exposes a common shortcut as effectively riding unprotected, insisting the strap is what makes
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Caution! Lovers May Pass.
- Bianchi · Naria · 2017
The campaign solves the challenge of inserting a bicycle brand into Valentine's Day, a seasonal moment typically dominated by traditional romantic gifts. It taps into the truth that couples riding together often drift, ride side-by-side, or travel slower because they are distracted by each other. Th
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Short Life
- detran-rn · Executiva Propaganda · 2017
Detran-RN, Brazil's regional traffic authority, built its Short Life road-safety campaign on a simple premise: reflection changes behaviour more than warnings do. The insight: drivers already know the rules, what's missing is the pause to actually think about their own choices behind the wheel, so t
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The Eyes You Leave Behind
- u-link · impact bbdo · 2019
U-link promotes its home-security cameras as a set of eyes that stay watching once you've gone. The insight: what worries people about leaving home is losing sight of it, so the eyes you leave behind reframes the camera as your own vigilance left on guard, letting you keep watch over what matters wh
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Keep your social media away
- Volkswagen · Pipe Bomb Advertising · 2020
Volkswagen's road-safety campaign targets a specifically modern distraction: checking social media notifications while driving. The insight: drivers who'd never text mid-drive still reflexively glance at a buzzing phone, so Keep Your Social Media Away frames the choice starkly, a notification versus
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Alcohol and drugs
- Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec · Lg2 · 2020
Québec's automobile insurance board and Lg2 built a road-safety message around the compounding danger of mixing alcohol and drugs before driving. The insight: combining substances doesn't just add risk, it multiplies impairment in ways drivers underestimate, so the illustrated print work makes that
Road safety advertising represents one of public service communication's greatest creative challenges: persuading people to change a habitual behaviour that they don't perceive as risky in the moment. The campaigns that succeeded understood that the moment of decision - the moment when someone decides to drive after drinking - is an emotional moment, not a rational one. The advertising that changed behaviour spoke to that emotion rather than overriding it with information.