Legend ("Ghost Chips")
NZ Transport Agency (NZTA)2011
Legend, better known as “Ghost Chips”, is a 2011 60-second television commercial for NZ Transport Agency, created by Clemenger BBDO Wellington.
The line
Stop a mate driving drunk. Legend.
Why it works
At a house party, a young man silently agonises over whether to stop his drunk mate George from driving, and imagines what staying quiet might cost, including George's ghost offering him chips he can never take. NZTA's 'Legend', made by Clemenger BBDO Wellington and directed by Steve Ayson, first played before the Rugby World Cup final on October 23, 2011. It targeted young Māori men, who accounted for 34 percent of male drink-drivers in fatal or serious crashes, after years of blood-and-guts road-safety ads. It is studied for moving road-safety advertising from shock to social permission: it cast its audience as cool, handed them lines to use at the awkward moment, and rewarded intervention with one word: "Legend." Those lines escaped into everyday Kiwi speech ("You know I can't grab your ghost chips"), the film became New Zealand's biggest meme of the year and passed a million YouTube views, and it won a D&AD Yellow Pencil in 2012.
Techniques
- Humour Lightens a grim subject with comic touches, such as a dead mate's ghost offering chips, and hands viewers quotable lines for the awkward moment.
- Plain folks Casts young Māori men as cool and ordinary at a house party, speaking in their own idiom, so stopping a drunk mate feels socially natural.
Sources · 4
Updated
