Pulling no punches, Adelaide developed campaign Selfish Prick has been given the top gong at Australian Institute of Marketing Awards for Excellence Gala in Sydney.

The campaign has a powerful, yet simple, public service announcement: Drink Driver. Selfish Prick. Although simple, it was clearly effective, as the campaign has been recognised with extremely strong outcomes of reducing drink driving incidents by 35 percent. South Australia has the lowest driving under the influence (DUI) rate in a decade.

Up against stiff competition, the SA Police campaign was awarded Campaign of the Year as well as Social Change Campaign. 

A spokesperson for SAPOL said “addressing road trauma is an emotive and daunting task, but we are pleased that our un-flinching efforts to reduce the lives lost each year are being recognised at a national level by our peers.”

Black Sheep Advertising’s Director of Client Services, Tom Ootes pointed to a Human Centred Marketing approach when developing the campaign.

“Our target market had likely driven under the influence of alcohol before – and gotten away with it, so we needed to develop an idea that resonated with them on a deeper level.”

“Occasional Offenders self-rationalise to themselves about why they will be ok and why they won’t get caught. They can even persuade themselves they drive more carefully after a few drinks and therefore won’t hurt anyone else too.”

“By positioning drink driving as a selfish behaviour, we bypassed all those arguments and hit them where it hurt.” 

Post campaign research showed that 100 percent of the target market felt ashamed about previous drink driving behaviour and 97 percent felt others would judge them if they drove drunk.

The term ’selfish prick’ entered the vernacular and was used in editorial, with 80 percent of the target market suggesting they would use the term to refer to drink driving behaviour in future.