Mobile taxi-booking service MyTeksi wanted to raise awareness among Malaysians about the dangers of drunk driving, and encourage them to take a taxi rather than risk driving themselves home.

But with an apathetic audience desensitized to such messages, no gentle reminder would do. So to reach them, we used parking valets at a nightspot and switched the cars of certain patrons who were leaving, with a hearse. Complete with casket, the hearse was both shocking and taboo, sobering up even the most inebriated patrons.

The patrons’ attention was then directed to the valet tag on their keys, where our message to take a taxi was revealed. PR: Footage of the stunt was captured and uploaded online, where it’s been viewed and shared by thousands, and caught the attention of the country’s largest circulated daily newspaper.

At a popular nightspot on a Friday night, we used parking valets to help us deliver our message.

Patrons who came to collect their car from our valets after a night of clear imbibing, were shocked when our valet pulled a switch and drove up in a hearse instead.

Reactions from these patrons were clearly spirited and vocal, but turned to relief and surprise when our valets directed their attention to the parking tag on their car keys, where our message was.

We filmed several instances of the stunt, and then uploaded it onto the MyTeksi YouTube site as a Public Service Announcement.

On ground, the stunt elicited a broad range of emotions (and some colorful language) but ultimately delivered the message. Footage of the incident was captured, then uploaded onto social media, gaining thousands of hits and sparking numerous debates. It also received coverage in The Star, Malaysia’s largest circulated daily with over 300,000 subscribers and a hardcopy readership of a million. This garnered a media value of RM35,000 and RM30,000 online, as well as a (combined print and online) PR value of RM137,652. All of which resulted in an ROI of over RM200,000 for MyTeksi, from a media spend of zero.