Vince and Larry, the Crash Test Dummies ("You Could Learn a Lot from a Dummy")

Why it works

Two talking crash test dummies, the cynical veteran Vince and his eager young partner Larry, who take every collision so that viewers don't have to. When the Department of Transportation and the Ad Council asked Leo Burnett for a seat-belt campaign in 1985, writer Jim Ferguson and art director Joel Machak first pictured dummies dragged unwillingly into cars to be smashed; Machak pushed for comedy instead. It is studied as the great counter-example to gruesome road-safety advertising: slapstick and two lovable characters made the message welcome in living rooms and turned a laboratory instrument into a pop-culture mascot, complete with a line of toys. The campaign won a Bronze Lion at Cannes, Clio awards and a Gold Effie. In its first year a federal survey in 19 cities found belt use rising from 23% to 39%, and the Ad Council credits the dummies with helping lift usage from 14% to 79% and saving an estimated 85,000 lives. Their costumes are now in the Smithsonian.