Imagine this: You're standing on a street corner and you look up to see a bus speeding down the street in reverse.
If this alternative campaign is having the right effect, the first thing you imagine is the accident that's about to happen.
What you are seeing is not really a bus gunning it in reverse but the back of a bus as it heads through traffic. A graphic completely covering the bus's rear makes it look like the bus's front, complete with an image of a driver with his head turned as if he were backing up.
It's a campaign now running in Amsterdam, and the advertiser is Centraal Beheer Achmea, an insurance company.
The giveaway is the company's message, positioned on the faux windshield, that reads: “Just call us.” Below is the company’s name.
The bus ad is an extension of a larger campaign running across TV and other traditional media, in which the company promotes its brand with depictions of near-accidents.
“All TV commercials and other ads of this brand are ending with the suggestion of an ‘almost’ accident,” says Marianne van Soomeren, media strategy director at DDB Netherlands, the agency that executed the ad.
“So the message is ‘call the insurance company’ (Apeldoorn bellen) in case something goes wrong or will go wrong in the near future,” she says.
The campaign runs through third quarter, and Van Soomeren says Centraal Beheer Achmea is considering running a wider campaign after receiving a good response from commuters who’ve seen the bus ad.
