Girlfriend ("If You Drink, Then Drive, You're a Bloody Idiot")

Why it works

A young woman, injured in a crash caused by her drunk boyfriend, is rushed through a hospital emergency department while a trauma team works on her. Grey Advertising's Greg Harper and Stewart Byfield were asked for a commercial that would "upset, outrage and appal" drink drivers, and they filmed inside the working emergency ward of the Royal Melbourne Hospital with a real medical crew, letting the trauma unfold. It was the Transport Accident Commission's first ad, launched in December 1989, a year in which 776 people died on Victoria's roads, to back an expansion of random breath testing. It is studied as the origin of Victoria's model of pairing raw, emotional advertising with visible enforcement, and for a blunt tagline used for decades. The Age reports that the road toll fell 37% over the following year; by 1992 deaths had dropped to 396, the first time below 400 since 1948, a fall the TAC's own review attributes to a package of breath testing, speed cameras, publicity and other measures.