NZ Transport Agency gives unwilling speeders a voice in latest campaign via Clemenger BBDO

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All over New Zealand, at any one time, hundreds of people are speeding who don’t want to be. And up until now, they haven’t had much of a say in it. If they speak up, or assert their right to choose their risk, they get shut down by the driver. So most of these ‘unwilling speeders’ stay silent, their reluctance to go that fast left invisible, or ignored.

 

Clemenger BBDO and the NZ Transport Agency have launched a new campaign called Your Speed is Shared, to give these passengers a voice, and ask the drivers to reconsider their right to dictate speed for others.

Says Rachel Prince, principal advisor advertising at the NZ Transport Agency: “With our social norm of the driver having exclusive say on their speed, passengers who want to slow down feel unreasonable, unjustified and alone.

“But for every speeder there’s potentially a passenger feeling extremely vulnerable.”





Says Brigid Alkema, ECD, Clemenger BBDO: “This work raises two important questions: Does the driver’s right to determine their speed overrule the passenger’s right to feel safe? And can we create an environment where if passengers speak up, it actually works?”

The launch film features people sitting in cars being driven at speed, but without a visible driver. By removing the drivers from the vehicles altogether, the viewer is left faced solely with the discomfort their speed induces in their passengers.

Says Jae Morrison, director, FINCH: “It was a privilege to make great actors genuinely uncomfortable with a speeding, invisible driver. Our crew did an amazing job pulling this off in-camera.”

The second job, of creating an environment where passengers speaking up has an effect, is brought to life through a series of four short supporting videos featuring the passengers themselves, discussing how they feel about being unwilling speeders.

“The idea here is to get speeding drivers to recognise the vulnerability their speed creates for their passengers.”

A series of billboards, also featuring the passengers and bearing the simple message ‘Slow me down’, brings home that is the driver who has control of the speed, but also the passenger who has to live with it.

Client: NZ Transport Agency
Agency: Clemenger BBDO
Production Company: FINCH
Director: Jae Morrison
Media Agency: OMD
Stills Photography: Steven Boniface

NZ Transport Agency gives unwilling speeders a voice in latest campaign via Clemenger BBDO