Dreamlike Traffic Safety Spot Becomes a Nightmare

Reality hits hard when you're crossing the street

So, you wanna keep your face glued to a phone screen while you cross a busy thoroughfare? That’s a crap idea. Because memes, K-pop and all manner of digital distractions aren’t nearly as real as a car or truck bearing down on you.

Ogilvy Spain and director Tomás Peña deliver the message in a disarmingly dreamlike PSA. The action grows increasingly stylized as a pedestrian gets sucked into an expanding online universe. It’s an effective and unexpected approach, more riveting, perhaps, that shooting entirely on location.

The dude appears especially vulnerable. His mental isolation makes him oblivious to his surrounds. We can feel this won’t end well.

And indeed, the :60 harkens back to the glory (oft-gory) days of traffic-safety spots from more than a decade ago. This one’s bloodless … to a point. But the closing shots suggest the walker might have reached his final destination.

“Saying that we’re a society held hostage by a screen may sound trite, but it’s completely true,” say agency creative directors Guille Fernández and Pablo Poveda. “Looking at your phone while crossing doesn’t expose you to a scare. It exposes you to an impact with an extremely high probability of death.”

Spain’s Directorate-General for Traffic produced the appeal, which breaks amid the busy run-up to Easter.