Curious’ Zia Mandviwalla and NZTA challenge parents’ complacency in new TVC via Clemenger

Curious director, Zia Mandviwalla, has made her name and built a showcase of awards through her characterization, beginning with the short film Night Shift, that brought in many of her seventeen international film awards and was selected to compete for the Palme D’Or at the 2012 Cannes International Film Festival against nine other international competitors.

Mandviwalla’s skill at telling stories though her characters has just produced another galvanizing commercial for NZTA with Clemenger BBDO Wellington.

VIEW THE SPOT

It is simply a film about what parents don’t see when their kids are driving on their provisional licences. Many parents have an ambivalent attitude to the two restrictions of provisional licenses – to neither drive between 10pm and 5am nor carry passengers unless supervised. But with more than two- thirds of New Zealand teenagers breaking the rules, the issue needed to be brought further up the list of worries for parents.

NZTA had an important message to deliver. How Mandviwalla and Curious did that matters to all New Zealand drivers.

Mandviwalla got a little help from her own experience to fully understood the brief.

Says Mandviwalla: “As a teenager I spent a lot of time riding in fast cars – usually as a passenger. And there were so many times when situations teetered on the brink of real danger. It was easy for the most innocuous situation to escalate and quickly grow out of control. I was never in a major accident, but I know a lot of people who were.”

Then her talent as a director shaped the solution.

Says Mandviwalla: “I wanted to capture this kind of tension here – to show how you can be a responsible young person, you can have the very best of intentions and yet a situation can quickly slide out of your control.”

The campaign has launched on television and cinema. It is also running online through TVNZ On Demand and 3Now On Demand, and is supported by print and radio.

Says Mandviwalla: “Getting the right tone and tenor of these characters was vital to us all. And it was a pleasure to bring these girls to life with Emily and Steve [Clemenger BBDO creatives, Steve Hensen and Emily Beautrais]. None of us had forgotten what it was to be young and behind the wheel and we all worked to create a spot that would resonate with parents across the country, who could see their young peoplein these characters.”

In just a few years since Night Shift made the worlds of film and advertising production take notice of Mandviwalla, she has built a substantial portfolio of commercials with Curious for major brands including NZTA with Clemenger BBDO NZ, Google Android with R/GA, Vodafone with Cummins&Partners, Rebel Sport with Ogilvy & Mather NZ, NZ Pork with Ogilvy & Mather, NZBCF with Colenso, Sky with DDB and NZ Navy with Saatchi & Saatchi.