STUPID/SMART
The Banger Blog · a Stupid/Smart breakdown
Classic · 2016

Meet Graham

Transport Accident Commission Victoria · Clemenger BBDO Melbourne

From Transport Accident Commission Victoria.

The insight

Road safety campaigns blame drivers, when the real problem is that the human body was never built to survive a collision.

The idea

Commission a sculpture of the only human body that could survive a car crash, built with a trauma surgeon and a crash investigator.

The Stupid/Smart of it

Stupid: Spending public money on a disturbing artwork rather than on conventional warning advertising.

Smart: Making a grotesque statue is an odd road-safety buy, but it proves the point anatomically instead of arguing it.

Why it works

A state road-safety authority has the crash data and the mandate to commission the science.

A physical object toured galleries and schools, and photographs of it did the rest.

The magic

Briefing an artist with a trauma surgeon and a crash investigator, so the grotesqueness is anatomically earned rather than designed for shock.

Idea-poweredIt works when you describe it out loud. You could brief this. Survives paraphrase.

Results

29Cannes Lions in 2017
8of them Gold
TouredState Library of Victoria, then regional Victoria

Recognition

Cannes Lions 2017: two Grands Prix — Health & Wellness, and Cyber.
29 Lions in total including eight Gold, making it among the most awarded campaigns of 2017.

Who made it

Client: Transport Accident Commission, Victoria
Agency: Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne
Sculptor: Patricia Piccinini
Science: trauma surgeon Christian Kenfield and crash investigation expert David Logan
Technology: Google Tango augmented reality, letting visitors look beneath Graham's skin
Shown at: State Library of Victoria from July 2016, then a regional roadshow

The way in

The devices behind this one, from our library of ways in:

Make the hero an object, not a personShow what you're meant to hide

Sources: Campaign Brief, launch announcement · Contagious, Insight & Strategy: Meet Graham · Campaign US, Cyber Grand Prix · Wikipedia, Project Graham

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