A hand that sticks out of the window of a car and moves following the shapes of the landscape. The image is part of the collective memory of Spanish advertising thanks to the emblematic advertisement “Do you like to drive?” from BMW, developed by SCPF with Toni Segarra. More than two decades later, the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) recovers that visual resource, but gives it a completely different meaning. What once represented the freedom and pleasure of driving now becomes a warning about the dangers of being distracted behind the wheel.
This is the approach of “If you drive, just drive”, the new awareness campaign created by Ogilvy Spain for the DGT, which addresses one of the most frequent and deadly accidents on Spanish roads: road departures. The proposal seeks to remember that losing attention for a few seconds can have irreversible consequences, even when no other vehicle intervenes.
Thus, the advertisement begins by evoking a scene familiar to several generations of viewers. A car drives along a secondary road, surrounded by nature, while a hand goes out the window and plays with the air. The movement of the fingers, which seem to draw the curves of the landscape, refers directly to the creativity that BMW popularized at the beginning of the century.
In that ad, titled “Hand,” the SCPF agency used the gesture to express a sensation that is difficult to communicate through commercial arguments such as the enjoyment of driving. The piece, linked to the “Do you like to drive?” platform, dispensed with the usual prominence of the car to build an emotional connection between the brand and the driver. The work, developed by a creative team headed by Toni Segarra, won the Grand Prize at the San Sebastián Advertising Festival in 2001.
The new DGT campaign seems to recover that imagery, but alters its outcome. The camera continues to show the route until the vehicle begins to drift, crosses the shoulder and ends up off the road. “You send an audio, you dig in your bag, you play with the air between your fingers and you go off the road. The number of lives that distractions while driving take is shocking”explain Guille Fernández and Pablo Poveda, Creative Directors of Ogilvy Spain.
According to the DGT, 546 people died in 2025 due to road departures on interurban roads, a figure equivalent to 43% of the fatalities recorded on these roads. Added to them are nearly 1,800 seriously injured people.
The campaign seeks, therefore, to modify the perception of a risk that may be less obvious than other traffic accidents and the message reminds us that an individual error can trigger a serious accident without the need for a prior collision.
Under the concept “If you drive, just drive”, the DGT insists on the need to maintain concentration and avoid behaviors that divert attention, from using the mobile phone to manipulating objects inside the vehicle or making seemingly innocent gestures.
The campaign will remain active until December 13. Its deployment includes television, cinema, online radio, press, outdoor advertising, digital media and social networks, in addition to the DGT’s own channels.
The creativity has been developed by Ogilvy Spain, with production by Little Spain and management and post-production by WPP Production.
