New Ad Council & NHTSA Ad Aims to Stop Texts & Car Wrecks

As part of their ongoing Stop the Texts. Stop the Wrecks. Texting and Driving Prevention campaign, the Ad Council and the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released new English and Spanish language television PSAs developed pro bono by ad agency Pereira & O'Dell.

The PSAs remind people that the kind of overconfidence displayed by those who text and drive is selfish and dangerous, and that no one is special enough to text and drive. The creative directs viewers to the campaign's new Tumblr site StopTextsStopWrecks.org for more information, and tips on how to stop texting and driving. The new strategy will be supported with shareable graphics and content across the campaign's social channels on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@StopTheTexts), with radio, outdoor and web assets released in the coming weeks. The PSAs will run in advertising time and space entirely donated by the media, per the Ad Council's model.

"We've learned from previous distracted driving PSAs that texting and driving and can cause serious accidents so we are focusing on how socially unacceptable and despicable this behavior is," said PJ Pereira, CCO & Co-Founder of Pereira & O'Dell. "You could be the nicest person on the planet but once you text and drive you should feel pressure all around you and be judged negatively by your peers."

The Ad Council and NHTSA have been working together to address distracted driving among teens since 2012. To date, the Stop the Texts. Stop the Wrecks. campaign has received more than $192 million in donated media support and the campaign has garnered more than 708,000 visits to the website.