Creative Concept / Copywriter

Belted Survivors—
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency

Turning the wounds left behind by seatbelts into badges of honour—

Live hard. Crash harder. Staunch young males make up the majority of New Zealand’s unrestrained crash fatalities. They reckon seatbelts are for kids, the elderly, the weak. 

Seatbelts needed a tough new image. 

Real crash survivors proudly wore their seatbelt wounds as badges of honour. Turning the visceral signs of a crash into powerful symbols of survival. And proving there’s nothing soft about a seatbelt. 

The boys’ pics hit eyes and feeds everywhere. Knowing these guys lean into gnarly shit, the survivors owned their graphic marks of survival where they’d hit our audience hardest: outside pubs; through VICE; on their own feeds. Their ten stories recruited hundreds more. Inspiring Belted Survivors everywhere to share images of their own seatbelt marks – and challenging their mates to make the right call, too. 

Seen by 5.4x NZ’s population in just two weeks, it hit our audience hard and fast; shifting 74% of their attitudes towards seatbelts.

  • Axis:        
    Grand Axis
    1x Grand Prix— Integrated
    8x Gold
    5x Silver
    14x Bronze
    6x Finalists

    Clio:        
    1x Silver
    3x Bronze

    D&AD:        
    2x Wood Pencils

    AdStars:        
    1x Grand Prix
    3x Gold
    4x Silver
    3x Bronze
    2x Crystal

    Effies:        
    Winner— Hardest Challenge Category
    1x Silver
    1x Bronze

    Cresta:        
    4x Gold
    10x Silver
    2x Bronze

    AWARD:        
    1x Gold
    1x Silver
    3x Bronze

    Best Awards:
    1x Silver Pin
    1x Bronze Pin

    Caples:        
    5x Silver
    7x Bronze
    8x Shortlists

    Cannes:        
    12x Shortlists

    Lürzer's Archive:        
    Cover of Vol. 2-19
    Print of the Week

    Contagious Magazine:         Campaign of the Week

    Poster House, New York:
    Selected to feature in their Living Archive collection

    BestAds:                      
    Pick of the Week— Print

The survivors were first to share their images with the world—

They hit eyeballs and feeds everywhere, encouraging Belted Survivors across the globe to share their own tales of survival, too—

They also shared the things they lived on for, in their own words—

"…unexpected, shocking, and instantly understandable. In a time when so many OOH ads look the same, these were visual exclamation points. We are so excited to have them in our permanent collection."

Angelina Lippert—
Chief Curator,
Poster House New York

Seen by 5.4x NZ’s population in the first two weeks alone, Belted Survivors hit our audience hard and fast; shifting 74% of their attitudes towards seatbelts—

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