Think about it. What's your worst parking nightmare?

That's easy: Looking back to see you've crashed into something while backing up.

That was the thinking of some ad people at TBWA/Raad in Dubai. They'd been brought in to create a campaign for the 2008 Nissan Pathfinder SUV. The goal was to promote the rearview cameras that come as standard equipment.

“When it started off, we were like, 'why don’t we look at what happens without a rearview camera?’” recalls Sakib Afridi, associate creative director at TBWA/Raad.

So the team set about placing bent and broken bikes and shopping carts behind parked cars around the city. Then they put up signs that read: “Rearview camera. Standard in the Nissan Pathfinder.”

Drivers, returning to their cars, would first think they'd smashed into them when easing into the parking spot. Then they'd go for a closer look and see the signs.

Initially, the team considered using garden gnomes, but since those aren’t very common in Dubai they went with bicycles and shopping carts instead.

“It started in the direction for a print campaign, but we thought it would be stronger as an ambient medium, and then there was kind of a light bulb moment,” Afridi says.

The campaign ran for about a two-week period at the end of 2007 at numerous locations around Dubai, and Afridi says a radio DJ discussed it on the air and a local newspaper picked it up as a story.

“People would look at the bikes and be like, ‘What’s going on?’” says Afridi. “But then you’d always see a smile on their face when they read the sign and got it.”