Junction59 in partnership with Candela

Client: MADD
Product: Stop impaired driving and support victims
Title: "Dead Silence"
Media: Televison, Digital, Radio, Direct Mail
Country: Canada
Date Of Campaign: September 10, 2018

Background: The Situation: MADD Canada has long been at the forefront of preventing deaths caused by drunk driving. Today, however, MADD is no longer focused solely on the perils of alcohol consumption. Instead, MADD is now campaigning against all forms of impaired driving, including those involving drugs and newly decriminalized cannabis. In an effort to build awareness of its expanded mandate – and to push for increased donor support – MADD decided to create a new multi-media campaign that leveraged the deeply poignant theme of “unimaginable loss”. The Challenge: The problem with an unimaginable scenario, like losing someone to an impaired driving crash, is that it’s just that… unimaginable. So our task was to elicit a powerful emotion that would compel our audience to try and imagine – if only for a very brief moment – what it would be like to be in that devastating situation. To that end, we would first have to soften up our target audience (i.e., everyone who ever loved anyone) by employing video and radio to convey our message through PSAs and social media postings. The idea had tobe so instantly felt, that it could be grasped through anything from a 30-second TV or radio spot to a 15-second YouTube ad. We would then follow up with a donation appeal through targeted direct mail. Perhaps the biggest challenge was to create a new tagline that would succinctly convey MADD Canada’s broader focus on saving lives by increasing awareness of how both alcohol and drugs can lead to impaired driving deaths. The Objective: Video: Drive 100K completed views on YouTube & Facebook;All Media: Increase the number of donors (either one-time or monthly givers) by 10% over the previous year.

Idea: The Insight: They say the first thing you forget about someone – once they’re gone – is the sound of their voice. In speaking with those who’ve lost a loved one, this theme kept popping up and proved almost as upsetting as the loss itself. So powerful was this insight that we felt it would really persuade our audience to reconsider any form of impaired driving and urge others to do the same. Forgetting what a loved one sounds like forces us to realize that not only have we lost someone, but we’ll continue to lose aspects of them long after they’re gone. The Execution: Video: Death by impaired driving can strike anyone. So we created three emotive videos featuring a toddler at the beach, a middle schooler on the street and a young adult hiking in a forest. We see that they’re talkingto us, but we only hear the splashing of the waves, the sound of traffic and the rustle of the trees. What we don’t hear are their voices – the first thing we forget about those who are no longer with us. And the thought of it is devastating. To convey MADD Canada’s expanded focus on both alcohol and drugs, we created a fourth spot featuring a joint, a beer and a pill that, when combined, form a microphone put on mute to symbolize asilenced voice. All :30 and :15 executions end with madd.ca to drive traffic to the website to learn more. Radio: In this spot, we hear a voice mail from a husband telling his wife he’ll be home soon. We then hear the same message being replayed repeatedly, each time feeling more anxious. Then it becomes obvious that the husband will never arrive home. And the only way his wife can hold on to him is by listening to his last words to her – over and over again. An announcer ends with the madd.ca CTA.

Results: The number of completed views of our 15-second videos on YouTube and Facebook added up to 108,831, surpassing our target of 100,000 completed views by 8.8% at an average cost-per-completed-view of $0.06 The overall campaign increased the number of donors (either one-time or monthly givers) by 12.4% over the previous year, exceeding our target of 10% by 24%. Our thoughts: MADD Canada is indelibly etched in the minds of so many Canadians. The brand is so iconic that everyone knows that MADD stands for Mothers Against Drunk Driving.But today, MADD is much more than that.Our challenge was to get people to stop thinking of MADD as it was originally positioned. We tried renaming it numerous times: Mothers Against Drinking and Drugs (but it missed the Driving part); Mothers Against Dangerous Driving (but it missed the Drinking & Drugs part); Mothers Against Impaired Driving or MAID (and we knew that would never fly). So we took a page from RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) and KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) and decided to stick with MADD and all the value that acronym brings with it. Changing the tagline was the more sensible thing to do. And hats off to our strategists for uncovering a real gem of an insight and how strongly it resonated with our target audience.Once we realized the power of a voice gone “dead silent”, we knew we were onto a really big idea. Even more importantly, the campaign’s results proved just how big it was.