Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Pub Loo drunk driving video goes viral

The online-only campaign for the British Department for Transport has captured 5 million views in five days.

By: Lesley Ciarula Taylor News reporter
They’re actors but they’re not acting.
When the mirror in a pub washroom explodes in front of them, each of a trio of young guys is showered in glass and blood. They gasp for air in panic as a head slams through the hole.
“We wanted something that linked road fatalities with drink driving. So what better place than a pub,” Darren Thomas, deputy head of account management at London ad agency Leo Burnett, told the Star.
“What better place than a pub?”

The online-only video campaign, the latest in a long association between Leo Burnett and the British Department for Transport’s anti-drunk driving effort, has captured more than 5 million views in five days on YouTube.


It’s been called one of the most shocking drunk driving videos ever, all the more so because there’s no car and no gore in the 52-second clip.
“The car is there, it’s implied in the screech of brakes, the windscreen shaped mirror, the crash sound effects and the head impacting the glass like an actual car accident,” said Thomas.
And the shock is real. The actors didn’t know what was going to happen when they walked into a real washroom of a real pub, only that a camera was filming.
“We had to use actors for insurance, liability and legal reasons, but their reactions are genuine,” said Thomas.
How did the actors recover from the shock?
“A cup of sugary tea and a cuddle.”
The woman’s head that shattered the washroom mirror was a mannequin.
The video was directed by veteran Ed Morris, whose award-winning work dates to the 1999 ad for Sony PlayStation “Double Life,” described as the “most awarded ad in the world.”

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