This summer, be safe! [advertising campaign]

Some months ago, Citroën launched a social campaign against the “text and drive” attitude that many people have in common. The advert headline is simply “Tex and driving can be dangerous”, but the three visuals are related to a very powerful and amazingly creative metaphor. Curious? Keep reading… 🙂

With its social campaign aimed to fight the use of mobiles while driving, especially for texting purposes, Citroën’s idea has been defined starting from a really obvious concept: the danger linked to the apparently harmless activity of sending an sms or writing posts on social networks when one is supposed to be concentrating on the road and what’s happening around the car. The creative part of this campaign, in fact, is not the message or the copywriting, but the metaphor used for creating the visuals.

The three images included in this social campaign present in the foreground an inch – the finger that everybody uses for texting – with its well designed and almost hypnotic concentric fingerprint. But for Citroën, on this occasion the inch is not just a finger: it is transformed into a shady character, one of those present in the worst nightmares, a Mafia boss, Dracula and Hannibal the Cannibal.

[via]

Thanks to this powerful metaphor and the fact that it is hyperbolic and includes some irony, the campaign is clear and helps to avoid the viewer’s rejection of this scary message, don’t you think?

Important: If you have planned to spend your holiday travelling by car, please, remember to avoid texting and driving at the same time!

Other posts about social campaigns