‘Yamraaj’ greets drinkers in experiential campaign against drunken driving

An experiential campaign by McCann’s Bengaluru office is doing the viral rounds, urging people not to drive after drinking.

The initiative for pub Zara in Chennai was executed with the help of the Chennai Traffic Police. It involved a man dressed as ‘Yamraaj’, the ‘God of death’, seated inside the cars being brought by the valets to people leaving the pub.

A two-minute video on the campaign that has done viral captures the execution. The video starts with guests of the bar getting into their cars getting shocked as they find the uninvited guest in their cars. Replete with bloodshot eyes, ornaments and a big moustache and mace, ‘Yamraaj’ scares the life out of the revelers – almost. The film captures reactions of screaming guests and urges them to ‘Drink and Get Driven’.

“We wanted to give people a wake-up call with this activation/experiential idea with a spin at the end of it – Drink and Get Driven,’’ said Anil Thomas, regional creative director, McCann Erickson, Bengaluru.

According to Thomas, the idea drove home the dangers of drunken driving in an extremely memorable, enjoyable and culturally relevant way which resulted in all the patrons who experienced the activation opting to use the drivers-for-hire service, rather than driving home themselves.

Thomas added that the traffic police were impressed with the response from the public and want to take it to the next level, by implementing it across the country. The traffic police of Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon have posted the video on their official webpages.

S M Bablu, manager, Zara, said that they were apprehensive about this initially when McCann approached them. “We were we very apprehensive about this initially and thought it might backfire but now we are extremely happy that we have done something like this. We have been getting a lot of appreciation from the customers since this campaign went viral on February 15.”
The shoot took place over a period of two days and only the footage of the customers, who have given their consent to be part of this campaign, has been included in the final output, Bablu said.

Credits
Agency: McCann WorldGroup
Chairman and chief creative officer: Prasoon Joshi
Regional creative director: Anil Thomas
Creative director: Rathish Subramanian, Melvin Jacob
Copywriter: Ketan Deshpande, Melvin Jacob & Anil Thomas
Account management: Vijay Jacob, Rahul Jain