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Want to see your life flashing before your eyes?

We’ve seen Facebook data used effectively to tap in the modern narcissistic streak, especially with Intel’s Museum of Me, but Clemenger BBDO and Resn have flipped that upside down—quite literally—with a brilliant anti-speeding campaign in the form on an online game for the New Zealand
Transport Authority (NZTA). 

www.flashdrivinggame.com targets the youthful audiences that are
all over online gaming, dub beats and virtual racing. They’re also the demographic NZTA finds it most challenging to get through to. 

http://vimeo.com/50592423The game
begins with you in the driver’s seat speeding down the motorway, with the powerful engine and dubstep pounding in your
ears.

Several
minutes into the race, after earning points and trying (unsuccessfully in my
case) to get through gates, you crash. The
unnerving surprise is that your Facebook pictures come together, crack like the windscreen and fade in and out, just like your
consciousness (it’s a bit of a double whammy, really, with a representation of your death all brought together under the spectre of Facebook-related privacy concerns).  

Just as
life can only be lived once, players can only play the game once (so don’t give
up playing too early). And the
message is not necessarily restricted to speeding, either.

“It also
says something about what you’ve been up to in your life, letting you
re-evaluate,” says Andrew Holt, managing director of Clemenger BBDO (a
colleague of his had a shot of reality when nothing but pictures of food
flashed before their eyes).

Holt said
it’s a good example of using the technology that’s available to make
campaigns more personal. Or, as some call it, the confluence of the math and the magic. 

Without
telling their audience anything about the ending, Holt said it had
been a challenge to promote in that regard. It called it a driving game and promoted
it with tease posts on local gaming blogs, a video trailer, release of the
soundtrack, giveaways and Facebook ads.

When
coming up with the concept, Clemenger BBDO’s idea was to see how a personal
death experience would change the way youth think about their speeding. It looked at products youth were interested in, and then hyped the new game with
peer-influencing, using the soundtrack and teaser video, through gaming channels
and music influencers at concerts.

Digital
interactive agency Resn came on board to fulfil Clemenger’s aim of “making it
as amazing as possible at the front end so people want to get involved and
follow through to the end of the game”, and award winning composer and sound
designer Jeramiah Ross (of Fly My Pretties) AKA Module came up with the sweet soundtrack.

NZTA’s
Rachel Prince says the racing game is a way to reach their younger audience
with a “pretty hard-hitting message about the issue of speed in a completely
unexpected and surprising way. We know they’re not always keen to hear what we
have to say, but using a medium that they can relate to is a way in”. 

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