Dontjerkanddrive Double Entendre Marketing Anyone

Now we could use all manner of double entendre’ in this blog post, but we promise to try and keep it clean; we did have to share it with you though…

A campaign in South Dakota, USA has been pulled (oops sorry) after State Rep. Mike Verchio cottoned on to the double-meaning in an ad series by the Department of Public Safety, calling it “a terrible error in judgement”. The campaign, which was targeted at young male drivers, was not as you might expect a literal suggestion not to ‘ahem’ while driving, but was in fact a safety feature encouraging them not to overcorrect in icy conditions.

Young male drivers were identified as the most likely groups to cause road traffic accidents over the winter, by overcorrecting in ice and snow. It was thought that the ad series entitled #DontJerkAndDrive would prove engaging to the audience and encourage them to “keep their cars out of the ditch” according to Lee Axdahl of the Highway Safety Office. Unfortunately however, Axdahl was overruled after complaints.

The adverts, which outperformed previous public safety campaigns on Facebook by 25 to 1, were still pulled due to complaints from people, many of whom assumed the Department hadn’t spotted the double meaning. Trevor Jones, Safety Department Secretary who pulled the series said "This is an important safety message and I don't want this innuendo to distract from our goal to save lives on the road."

It’s an odd one this; if return-on-investment, engagement and hopefully a reduction in accidents is the aim, then arguably, this campaign is a big hit! If however, they’re more concerned with the sensitivities of older generations, then rejection is probably the way to go…