In order to attract the attention of the Russian society to the topic of “bad driving”, we had to show the dreadful consequences of speeding. It would be impossible to show it on TV due to strict limitations of the Russian adverting law prohibiting demonstrations of severe car crashes. Only branded video on YouTube could work.

Challenge

Speeding is one of the main causes of traffic accidents. Every year in Russia, around 200 thousand people are injured or killed. The INTOUCH Insurance company, which stands for responsible driving, wanted to convey the dreadful consequences of speeding to drivers.

Idea

Some of the most viewed videos on the Internet among Russian users are crash videos captured on dash cams, which are popular across our country. We decided to use the format of such videos as a channel of communication.

Solution

We figured that inserting frames from an alternative footage into the primary one at given intervals would cause the appearance of the alternative sequence in preview. We uploaded a video entitled "Most terrible fatal car crash ever". By clicking on it, users could see nothing similar with mentioned before, except one car overtaking another. The impatience of our drivers caused them to try finding the car crash quickly. As soon as users started scrolling the video forward to see the crash, in the alternative preview they saw a head-on collision with a truck and the message “Don’t Rush!”

We uploaded a video entitled "The most terrible fatal car crash ever".

By clicking on it, the user expected to see the accident, but the video did not meet his expectations. In the video, one car just overtook another with allowed speed. Nothing else. The impatience of our drivers caused them to try finding the car crash quickly. As soon as the user dragged the cursor along the timeline to find the crash, in the preview thumbnails he saw the alternative sequence showing a head-in collision with a truck. Then the message “Don’t Rush!” was displayed.

In just 3 days with zero media spends the Mortal Timeline video became popular not only among Russian users, but also abroad. It was re-posted by the most well-known marketing and advertising sites in USA, Brazil, Japan, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, India, Australia, New Zealand and many others.

Mortal Timeline was described as “ingenious” in the “Most popular” section at www.adweek.com.

Also Thestable.com published the video in STANDOUT column.

Little Black Book posted Mortal Timeline into 'Too Hot to Miss' & 'Editors' Choice' section.

YouTube Analytics shows success of our direct communication. More than 68% of viewers scrolled the video and saw our main message — Don’t Rush.

We believe such innovative and outstanding communication approach will stick into viewer’s memory and encourage people to be more responsible on the road.

Mortal Timeline is a truly important project not only for INTOUCH and the target audience, but also for society in general.

Intouch is an insurance company that launched the “Movement for responsible driving” in Russia. It stands for inspiring drivers to change their driving behavior, attitude and perception.

We shot a car video with a dash cam — a format very popular with our audience.

If you watch the video "Most terrible fatal car crash ever” in regular mode, you do not see anything. If you drag the timeline and speed up the video, you can see a severe head-on collision with a truck.

The brand reveal is at the end of the video after the message “don’t rush”. We show the brand logo and the Movement logo.