Advertising: A Very Different Take On "The Tortoise and the Hare" for Transport for London Ad

This is a completely different take on Aesop's fable. Usually you see it with portrayed with (essentially) a laugh track - this... notsomuch. 

This is a sobering modern retelling, released in March this year (2015).

And it's very effective.

Here's the double-up poster - hare one way with a warning and a tortoise the other with an affirmation

                                   

                                               A not very healthy-looking hare

A happy looking tortoise

                  

In case you hadn't guessed, the campaign is, indeed, marketed at teens, with the idea of #ThinkSlow. 

I hate that we seem to need these sorts of PSAs at all, but I'd rather put up with PSAs, knowing they might even save one life, than have the alternative.

Pippa MacSherry, head of marketing operational at TfL, said the work is a natural extension of the long-running ‘Don’t let your friendship die on the road’ campaign. 

“By encouraging a more considered approach to crossing the road, we hope to reduce the number of pedestrian road related collisions. The campaign updates and re-imagines the classic tale of the hare and the tortoise – to show how ‘slow’ wins out,” she said.

Ed Palmer, managing partner at M&C Saatchi, commented: “It’s perilously easy to patronise and finger wag with this audience. Putting a modern twist on a well-known fable allows us to land our message without resorting to the more well-trodden type of cautionary tale to which this audience has become inured. The creative approach was to make safe roadside behaviour more appealing and aspirational for this audience.” 

The campaign will run across video-on-demand, cinema and social from early March and builds on neuro-scientific research which suggests the target age range is less likely to exercise restraint.