Walking on thin ice

New Zealand’s best known trompe l’oeil muralist Marc Spijkerbosch was recently commissioned by ad agency Ogilvy to paint five images promoting pedestrian safety on pavements around Auckland for the city’s council. The images portray various dangers of the wild: sharks, molten lava, a very hungry-looking crocodile, a pit of snakes and a broken footbridge across a chasm. Beside each is this message, painted in white to stand out from the pavement: “Don’t step into danger.” Then in smaller lettering are statistics about how many pedestrians have been injured or killed in the city. “It was apparent that pedestrians had a false sense of security around crossing the road,” Ogilvy account executive Tiveshni Naidoo says. “We needed to interrupt this state of mind, and a subtle or predictable channel would not achieve this.”