Here’s the problem with this don’t text and drive campaign from Belgium-based Happiness Brussels for Parents of Road Victims which employed New York artist Andres Serrano as photographer. The campaign, entitled Don’t Text and Die is, of course, designed to call attention to the dangers of texting while driving. And the campaign’s title harkens the death texting while driving can cause the driver and those around him.
Now we understand this is one of those artsy fartsy approaches to advertising that attempts to lend some cachet to an otherwise mundan cause campaign but if all you are going to talk about in the campaign’s documentary is how the subjects in these photographs look like they are dead while texting, they should probably be texting while they are being photographed.
Yes, we know, we know. It’s a metaphor. And we get that Serrano is big on shooting death. But do you think your average, uncultured 17-year-old is going to make any kind of connection? This is the kind of campaign that is designed to appeal not to the actual target audience but to peers and critics.
Kind of like most the entires you see at Cannes.
