Awareness Test: Look Out For Cyclists

Grabbing the attention of an audience can be a very challenging task for advertising agencies to execute. With attention spans decreasing, there is only a brief window of opportunity for a commercial to catch the eye of its viewers and most importantly, keep it.

Viewer engagement can be a very resourceful tactic for agencies to utilize, especially if the advertisements goal is to make a point. This can be successfully seen in social experiment or social awareness advertisements.

In 2008, Transport for London created an audience involved commercial about testing awareness. The experiment was simply called, "Awareness Test", which is boldly stated at the beginning of the advertisement. A line of people then appear, with four of them wearing all white, and four of them wearing all black being split into teams. The narrator asks the viewers to focus on the team in all white, and to count how many times those team members pass a basketball to one another. The teams then begin to move around and intertwine, as strictly focusing on the team in a white becomes a challenge. The teams are then paused, and the narrator asks the viewers how many times the basketball was passed. The answer is then revealed as being 13, however, it is followed by the question, "Did you see the moonwalking bear?". The recording of the teams passing the ball is replayed, and a man in a bear costume is revealed dancing in the middle of the mix of team players, something that could have easily been overlooked as the viewer was focusing on the team in all white passing the basketball. The commercial then states, "It's easy to miss something you're not looking for. Look out for cyclists." The commercial was first seen in movie theaters around London, and then was uploaded online where it almost immediately became viral, hitting 10 million viewers.

This viewer engagement commercial was successful because of the usage of the Elaboration Likelihood Model's central route concepts that include utilizing critical thinking of its audience and leading to long lasting behavior or change, which was proven by the decrease of cyclists being hit by vehicles in the London area. The advertisement also used some aspects of the peripheral route of the ELM by incorporating strong visuals with the awareness test as well as creating strong emotional appeals such as a level of shock value or understanding to the viewers which can make the commercial more impactful and easy for the audience to remember.

View the commercial below: