Buzzed
This advertisement, which can be found on billboards across America, argues an effective case against the practice of drunk driving or, in this case specifically, buzzed driving. The billboard was the creation of the AD Council, an organization responsible for launching numerous famous campaigns that bring attention to significant public issues such as domestic violence, seat belt education, crime prevention, and wildfire prevention.
The left side of the advertisement features a man with a glazed look in his eyes and a breathalyzer being held to his mouth by someone who is presumably a police officer in the foreground. It is very clearly the middle of the night with the warm lights on his face simulating street lights and darkness in the background with scattered, vibrantly colored lights. These few details paint a very clear story of what happened preceding the picture. This man had been pulled over in the middle of the night by some form of poor driving and was believed to be drunk, thus the officer decided to test him using the breathalyzer.
This advertisement is effective especially as a billboard, as, at a glance without even reading the text accompanying it, it’s clear what the advertisement is trying to convey. The bold text which takes up the right side of the image says, “YOU JUST BLEW $10,000” the implications here are obvious, but what helps in making this phrase so memorable is that it also serves as a pun. By being drunk you are metaphorically blowing about 10,000 dollars into the breathalyzer. The immediate cost of a ticket might be a lot less than that, but on top of insurance raising and the costs of going to court it adds up quickly. If someone is already going to be making the poor decision to be drinking and driving then its reasonable to assume that simply telling them they shouldn’t because it’s bad and could hurt people probably won’t be too effective. Therefore, by instead using logic and telling them that that one decision could be an extremely expensive one, in most cases it would cause those people to think twice before drinking and driving. Lastly is the text under the bolded phrase. At this point, you would have already seen the picture and the bolded phrase. Due to the natural motion of our eyes, we tend to look at images from left to right and then down, (think of a Z pattern,) in this case from the picture to the text. In this specific advertisement, the viewer would have read the bold phrase first as it is more eye-catching and sits above the smaller text. Therefore, at this point both a situation is painted and it has already established credibility in your mind with the bold text. Using this credibility it gives a second simple phrase, “Buzzed driving is drunk driving.” The implication is that buzzed driving can be just as dangerous as drunk driving, however because of the preceding phrase it’s influential because it ties back to the idea that drunk driving could end up being extremely costly for you.
In short, the combination of these 3 segments of the billboard does a fantastic job of driving one final, concise point. That driving, even a little bit buzzed, could end in far worse than just a ticket for you. It plants a seed of doubt in the mind of the viewer that will make them think twice before having something to drink if they know they will be driving. In addition, the memorability and simplicity of the advertisement means the message will stay in their mind for a long time after only seeing it once.