This 90” TV and cinema commercial shows real shopkeepers commenting on the behaviour of stoned people in their shops. The shops are the kind of places stoned people frequent; a bakery, a corner store and Chinese Takeaway.

Because they’re actual shopkeepers, they've seen stoned people many times before and comment with authority and experience. Via CCTV footage from inside the shops, the shopkeepers watch the stoned customers being slow, distracted and not really ‘with it’.

When the customers head out to their cars, the shopkeepers question whether they should really be driving while they’re stoned.

Believability is everything for road safety ads. If it comes across as false, the message is dismissed. The hardest audience to convince is marijuana users who drive. They consider driving stoned a safe alternative to driving drunk. In their eyes, no one is less qualified to tell them they shouldn't drive stoned than the government. To make an anti-drug driving film they would believe, we cast the real experts on stoned behaviour, the actual shopkeepers of New Zealand.

The casting process involved recruiting shopkeepers who had little or no camera experience, but plenty of experience dealing with stoned people. We cast them from shops stoned people frequent, such as takeaways, convenience stores and bakeries. Their real observations of stoned people were incorporated into their performance. We placed them in real shops, to make their performance completely authentic.

This created a real and convincing warning about stoned driving from the people who've seen more stoners than anyone. Our drug-driving audience accepted the authenticity of the shopkeepers and, more importantly, their message.

Maori took ownership, shared and endorsed the film.

From a starting audience of just 15,000, ‘Blazed’ had 2.6m+ views, 101,000+ FB shares, Likes, tweets, favorites and retweets.

Earned media was 42x higher than the investment in the project.

Word of mouth was positive, with quotes like:

“Funny as, but message is RIGHT! See what our kids think of us/how they imitate us and the danger we put them in...Shit just got REAL!”

We’ve a long way to go to reduce drug driving on our roads. The careful creation and placement of 'Blazed' has taken us one step closer.