Straight to the point

Two hard-hitting, ‘in your face’ anti-speeding campaigns from Colenso and  Saatchi & Saatchi — who were both awarded Bronze Lions at the recent 2009 International Advertising Festival in Cannes — have been accredited in helping reducing the number of fatal traffic accidents on roads north and south of Auckland. Papakura and Franklin District Council’s ‘bleeding billboards’ (below)  — designed by Colenso  — feature portraits of children that bleed from the eyebrows, nose, ears and mouth when it rains. The effect is startling and transforms fresh-faces into car crash victims above the strap line: ‘Rain changes everything. Please drive to the conditions’. When the sun shines they return to normal. For the Rodney District Council ‘Slow Down’ campaign (above), Saatchi & Saatchi wanted to prove how violent the force of a crash was. With the help of an engineer they calculated that at 125 kph, it is equal to 10 grenades exploding. To demonstrate this they blew up a car, collected the debris, reconstructed it with 1000’s of pieces of string and invited people to see it.