Young, reckless, overconfident drivers treat road rules as if don’t apply to them. How do you stop that? You don’t show them images of the worst that might happen. You make it happen. You take away the only thing they care about – their freedom – and you hand them over to their mums.

Richard Berney, executive creative director at 303 MullenLowe Perth, explained, “The horror of choreographed crash scenes has nothing on the emotional stopping power of your own mother’s taste in music. Nate is the perfect anti-hero for young drivers who crave control of their love lives, work weeks, and passenger side windows.”

303 MullenLowe Perth’s Time with Mum campaign follows licence loser, Nate ‘Dawgg’, over 90 days of passenger seat hell with his mum in the driver’s seat. His independence, social life and even front seat status gradually evaporate after losing his licence.

The 12 scenes, directed by Tony Rogers (director of cult TV series Wilfred), will play out over 12 weeks to give young viewers the experience of a real-time licence suspension period.

Young drivers can also feel Nate’s pain through his passenger seat social posts, as well as TV, cinema, radio and an outdoor campaign to follow. The messaging will be targeted to demonstrate what’s at stake – Lose your licence, lose your love life, or Lose your licence, lose your gym sesh.

Derry Simpson, managing director of strategy and innovation at 303 MullenLowe Perth, commented, “Our brief was to target risk takers head-on. This is a group of drivers who speed regularly and are also more inclined than others to drink drive, use their mobile phones while driving, and not wear their seatbelts. Research shows that they don’t see their risk-taking behavior as a road safety issue. They think they are bullet-proof and so are not motivated by crashing, personal injury or causing harm to others.

“But there is one consequence we unearthed that they do respond to – and that’s the fear of losing their license and, with it, their freedom.”

Deputy premier and minister for road safety, Liza Harvey, noted in her launch speech that the campaign is a bold new approach to targeting a hard-to-reach target audience. Time With Mum gives risk takers an insight into how their life would be impacted should they end up in Nate’s position – and in a way they can relate to.

The Road Safety Commission recently released crash figures for the first half of 2016, showing 88 deaths in Western Australia to June 30 this year. That’s 9 more than for the same period last year and 46 of the deaths were men aged 20 to 50.

According to research, risk-taking drivers often have the least experience on the road and the most confidence. They might be lawyers, doctors or tradies, but they’re united by a reckless attitude and a disregard of road rules.

The campaign launched on Sunday July 24 and amassed around 140,000 views in its 1^st week on Facebook alone.

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