Campaigns need to be more grotesque in order to create an effect

All the time we see campaigns to prevent irresponsible acts from users of different products, such as cars, mobile phones, alcohol, cigarettes and many other. What we don’t know how to control is the abuse of all of them.

I think that we have failed to reach this goal, actually we have seen lots of advertising aiming to stop these abuses. But still there have been plenty of problems related to these campaigns which has made them less than effective. Lets take for example the latest campaign seen in Las Condes, Lo Barnechea and Vitacura, to prevent people from doing dangerous activities while driving. Still the people who created this campaign forgot the most important thing, they are trying to spread safe driving, therefore if people read the exhaustively long signs they posted on the roadside, clearly there are going to be more car accidents as a result of that.

Or perhaps we should take as an example the cigarette campaign to warn people that smoking is dangerous for help. Publicity in most developed countries tells in a harsh and direct way the harms that smoking can do for health. Here in Chile instead they show some cases which are not, by any means, grotesque.

What people need are shocking images and examples on how smoking, drinking and driving, and many other irresponsible conducts affect their lives and the consequences the have.

As horrible as it might sound people need images, and not images and words, just imagery that shows the real naked truth. Most of people tend to think that what they see is not real, or maybe that it is unreachable, and that is what happens in Chile.

People see things in pictures and advertising which are far away from truth that they know, and usually they tend to think that those things are never going to happen to them. Still there are some kind of images that have a greater impact on people, and unfortunately that in pain and suffering, death and blood.

People need commercial and images that dare to show the real last consequences of these acts: mashed bodies because of a car crash, dead lungs, bleeding mouths, and so many other things that appeal to a different sense.

The basic images which are not so grotesque either make people laugh or ignore them because they don’t affect them in a sensitive way. But tragedies do create that effect on people, a shocking effect and that is what Chilean people need. Roaside publicity will only cause more accidents, superficial images on cigarette cartons will not make people stop smoking, we need to create an impact with publicity in order to put a stop to this problem.

In order to stop abuses like these we need images as cruel as they can be and we need to spread them in many ways as possible. That is the only way that people are finally going to understand the impact of these abuses in their lives.