Here’s an entry in the “PSA with a Twist” genre that we missed from last week in which Saatchi & Saatchi’s Swedish office finds an interesting way to cut down on the texting and driving epidemic.
Here’s “A SIRIous Safety Message”:
That’s nothing if not a creative use of ye old-timey radio ad. It’s also something of a product placement coup for both Apple and Google as a dual Android version of the ad ran during rush hour in Sweden. We have little doubt that the Mac folks’ notoriously particular PR team approved Siri’s performance in this spot.
Saatchi & Saatchi CD Regner Lotz claims that the project represents “the world’s first interaction with a device without human intervention.”
ECD Jason Mendes also elaborated on why the agency decided this would be a good idea:
“If you ask people to turn off their phones in a cinema, they will, but ask them to turn it off in a car and surprisingly they don’t. Go figure. So it’s understandable why Toyota went to this extreme to make the point.”
Interesting that people refuse to turn their phones off at the most dangerous possible time, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, we have to question the accuracy of Jason Mendes’s first statement, given the fact that some can’t even seem to abandon their phones while on Broadway. (We get it, dude. It was all about the ladies.)