Lag Kills - Palmer® - Minimal Portfolio & Agency

Lag Kills /

Lag Kills /

Lag Kills /

Helping young drivers survive

How do you deliver a life-changing message to an audience that has tuned out traditional media? You go where they are. With ‘Lag Kills,’ I helped pioneer the Queensland Government’s first foray into gaming content. Despite a lean budget, the initiative delivered outsized impact, generating high engagement and receiving positive organic reactions online. This campaign won the BADC Best of Show award.

See it live

Year:

2022

Category:

Digital campaign / Branded entertainment

Client:

Queensland Government

My role:

Creative Lead

What I did:

Digital, Gaming , Art Direction

problem

Drink driving is a major cause of fatalities and serious injuries amongst young drivers in Australia. Young drivers are over-represented in major road crashes caused by drink driving with 888 serious incidents resulting in injury or loss of life in the last 5 years in Queensland alone.

And 1 in 3 young drivers admit to still driving even when they know they're over the 0.05 blood alcohol content (BAC) limit. To make things more difficult, young drivers are increasingly hard and expensive to reach using traditional marketing channels. We needed to find a way to influence this behaviour in a new and engaging way.

Insight

Gaming is no longer a subculture; it is Australia's new baseline for engagement. With over 70% of the population identifying as active gamers, the medium has evolved into a "digital third place." This permanent behavioral shift offers a high-attention environment to connect with users where they are most present.

Solution

We created LAG KILLS – a world-first gaming challenge to five of Australia’s most influential gamers and Australia’s biggest esports and gaming team @ChiefsESC. The gamers needed to play their favourite games with 300ms ping – the same delay (300 milliseconds) that results from driving under the influence of alcohol. This resulted in slower reaction times while playing games like Minecraft, League of Legends and Call of Duty – and resulted in repeated ‘game overs’ or deaths.