Road safety campaigners in Toronto, Canada have devised a clever way to try and stop motorists from texting and driving by using a billboard campaign that encourages them to do just that – text while driving.
The spoof ad comes with a morbid twist – it’s an ad for a funeral home with the inference you’ll quickly find yourself in one if you use your phone while driving. However, the Watham Funeral Home is fictitious and is basically a road safety message in disguise.
It’s actually unclear who’s behind the campaign but was the brainchild of Montreal’s John St. ad agency.
However, the Watham Funeral Home does indeed have its own website and it’s only then visitors realise the whole thing’s a road safety stunt.
The site’s message reads: “If you’re here, you’ve probably seen our “Text and Drive” billboard. And if you have, you probably came to this website to tell us what horrible people we are for running an ad like that. And you’d be right. It is a horrible thing for a funeral home to do.
But we’re not a funeral home.
We’re just trying to get Canadians to stop texting and driving, which, if current trends continue, is expected to exceed fatalities from drinking and driving as early as next year. And while most people wouldn’t even think about drinking and driving, over half of Ontario drivers admit to reading texts while behind the wheel. That’s more than half of the drivers on the road today risking their lives, their passengers’ lives and the lives of their fellow motorists and pedestrians.
Which should make you even madder than our billboard did.”
