We gave ourselves a very ambitious and challenging brief: to save lives with one simple Short Message Service. Thanks to a Cambridge University research, we made an interesting discovery: everybody can read a sentence even if the letters of the words are changed, given that the first and last letter of each word is at the right place. We convinced our client, Generali Group Insurance, to use this idea to create and develop a new and unseen campaign about alcohol testing. An apparently unintelligible, “drunken” SMS was sent to the target during St. Patrick’s nights, inviting 18/24 years old boys and girls not to feel too confident about their perceptions and to take the attached alcohol test before driving home. The app allowed those who resulted positive to call a taxi without risking their lives. The SMS sending to the databases of the four main Italian Telco’s 3, Tim, Vodafone and Wind, was obtained for free thanks to the victory of this idea at the Italian Mobile Advertising Awards.

Many European countries, Italy included, celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day for a whole weekend. It’s the perfect time of the year to go out and have some drinks with friends. Sometimes… too many drinks, and our brain becomes our false friend. Young people have seen any kind of “Don’t drink and drive” messages and it’s getting more and more difficult to reach them. But they are sensible to the digital world, and fascinated by technology. That’s why we linked our SMS to the app called E-Polizza, one of the first insurance apps in the world to give access to all the Generali Group Insurance interactive tools, alcohol test included.

The results were really unprecedented:

° 1.350.000 young involved

° 95% of the receivers opened the message,

° - 21% car accidents compared to the previous year*

(*Source: http://www.asaps.it/36356-