NZTA won’t reprise ‘ghost chip’ campaign that went viral, sparked Facebook fanbase

By Hannah Lynch

Jan. 13 (BusinessDesk) – The New Zealand Transport Agency, which scored its biggest online hit with a drink driving campaign that coined the phrase ‘ghost chips’, doesn’t plan to reprise a story line that has its own Facebook fan pages and went viral on YouTube.

The television advertisement, officially named ‘Legend’, has attracted 1.65 million views on YouTube. It features a young man "internalising a really complicated situation" as he ponders whether to tell a mate he is “too wasted” to drive home. Among Facebook pages that have sprung up since it was launched in October are: ‘You know I can’t grab your ghost chips’ and ‘Bro, Monique says your dumb.’

“While it’s possible, we’re not currently looking at using the same characters again,” Andrew Knackstedt, media manager at NZTA told BusinessDesk. “We’ll continue to use approaches which work best with our audiences. Sometimes this will mean humour.”

The government transport agency’s strategy appears to be paying off. Total road fatalities were 281 in 2011, the lowest level since record began in 1952.

The NZTA spent about $500,000 of its $12 million annual advertising budget on ‘Legend’. Its ads typically cost between $500,000 and $600,000, with those depicting car accidents costing the most.

In 2010 the agency shifted its focus to young drivers under the influence of drink and drugs, having previously targeted seatbelts, ‘give way’ rules at intersections and safety on railway crossings.

Its latest campaign, to be released this Sunday, uses unsuspecting members of the public as passengers in a car driven by an actor claiming to be high on drugs, and films their response.

The ‘Legend’ campaign’s humour marked a departure from previous advertising that relied on shock tactics, including ‘Trapped’, a drink-driving campaign that depicting the death of a young man after his drunk friend drove off the road.

Ghost chips “has universal appeal,” said Julieanna Hastings, account director at Clemengers BBDO, the advertising agency who produced the advertisement. “We found naturally authentic people and gave them credible convergence to confront these situations.”

“They weren’t actors and now they are becoming famous in their own right.”

Advertising campaigns generally run for 18 months but are continuously tracked for their effectiveness, Hasting said.

(BusinessDesk)

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