Fun Not Dead
The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia Canada (ICBC) started a new campaign under the catchy slogan, “It's no fun if you're dead”. Car crashes remain the number one killer of youth, and a leading cause of accidental death for all age groups. ICBC is committed to countering this trend.
Such commitments are certainly laudable but their effectiveness is more important. Does ICBC think that the main cause of the problem lies in the fact that young people are not informed about dangers of speeding, or not informed convincingly enough, or the message is not “edgy and attention-grabbing”? One should be very na?ve to think that if you “edgily” tell a young guy to stop speeding he will stop. At this age behavior of guys and gals is ruled by hormones. Scary pictures only make adrenaline rush stronger. Speeding, sex, drugs, extreme sports – all these things make life more intense. Young people do drugs or speeding not because they are uninformed but because it’s fun. They will start thinking if being dead is fun or not on a hospital bed.
Ok, there’s definitely one segment among young people that will be very sensitive about this campaign and will be very careful about driving. This segment is called juvenile neurotics. Young neurotics don’t date because they are scared of AIDs, they don’t smoke pot at parties because pictures of dead junkies haunt them, and they drive 20 mph because they know ‘being dead is not fun’. The problem is that their whole life is not fun. They think about death so often that it’s cruel to put more pressure on them with “attention-grabbing” campaigns like that. Neurotic guys and girls are often suicidal.
What’s the point of ICBC campaign? To scare young drivers or to give them some fun, irrespectively? I think the latter is closer to truth.
Guys on pictures definitely didn’t die in a car crash. Actually they were dead for at least two or five days (it depends on temperature and humidity).
Dead guy’s friends are stoned like hell, no doubt. “Y’know, gals… Trevor’s kinda cold and stenchy… I think he’s gonna skip this joint…”
Possible headings for this ad,
“Friends don’t let friends go speeding even when they are dead”
“Say ‘no’ to necrophobia. It’s fun.”
“He was the only one who could drive. Montana Driving School”.
“He run out of Heinz”.
Via http://www.nofunbeingdead.com/
posted by Konstantin at Friday, April 07, 2006
3 Comments:
After reading your points I think there are many little thingies that really makes this ad a bit bizarre.
It's almost if you would say:
"You don't have except that your dear buddy is dead. Necrophilia is ok, just do it."
I find it also interesting how the positioning is made in this ad. The gilrs on right are positioned as one "group" and the guys on the left. Girls don't seem really care about the guy who's in a state of decomposition.
Why dead guy has collapsed on the left side and not right Couldn't he be just staring in front of him in?
It seems that the guy on the left is more concerned about his pal, on different levels of liking.
Quite apparently the ad wants to indeed communicate to the male drivers or males in general.
This is very cool
I wrote a post in my Blog, but in italian :-)
http://lavorodafilosofo.blogspot.com/2006/04/itsno-fun-if-youre-dead.html
I think that the message is clear and incisive because it shows a strong thing like death.
I'm in the target and I know the meaning of death; the image give the sense of happynes while someone could die.
The real trouble was to sintetize the message in an unique image. From this point of wiew the Ad is not really good, but the concept is ok!
All yours sociological consideration don't value in front of the death.
When I saw my friends spread on the street I knew that I must be prudent with my car.
For sure the cadaver had to be 'nicest'.
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