Anti-speeding ads
I’ve done some research into the effectiveness of these scary road safety ads.
OK, that last sentence was a lie. I googled “anti-speeding ad effectiveness” and found someone else’s research, which I’m now about to paraphrase minus the scientific bits.
So, I found this study which focused on the effectiveness of fear in anti-speeding adverts. (The idea was to conduct a controlled study that removed the multitude of factors that influence road safety beyond simply advertising effectiveness.) In the study they describe two types of fear-based advertising: ‘fear-only’ and ‘fear-relief’. I would say the advert below falls firmly into the former category. The only relief comes when the ad is over. (Fear-relief advertising means getting the audience scared, making them feel uncomfortable and then paying off with a happy ending due to adoption of the recommended behaviour.)
Anyway, conclusion 1 is that fear-only adverts have a higher rate of wear-out than fear-relief adverts. Fear-only ads have a high impact for a short amount of time but don’t change behaviour as effectively as the fear-relief adverts over a longer period of time.
Conclusion 2 is that, despite emotional wear-out, all of these ads had favourable behavioural effects with increased exposure. So one of the main recommendations was to run each ad for longer rather than come up with ever more horrific ads every few months. Bad news for agencies but good news for tax payers.
All very interesting except I make adverts for mobile phones.
