Crossing railway tracks is no monkey business

Western Railways has launched a print campaign to spread awareness about crossing unmanned railway tracks carefully. Interestingly, the campaign uses monkeys (as a symbol of Mahatama Gandhi's three monkeys) as messengers to tell people what not to do while walking on the railway crossings.

The idea behind the creative was to make people alert about the dangerous consequences of using mobiles, headphones or earphones, while crossing unmanned railway crossings, and has caught media's attention.

The railway department is running the campaign across 18 newspapers for 15 days, including rural regions, as well as on television screens on railway stations.

Deepak Advertising, the agency behind the campaign, claims that the impact of it has been extremely high in the Malwa and Indore regions where it is being run. The agency believes that when people are required to tell what not to do, there can't be better messengers than the three wise monkeys of Mahatma Gandhi.

Speaking about the thought behind the creative, Deepak Jetha, MD, Deepak Advertising, says, "The topic for the campaign was 'Safety at Unmanned Level Crossing', and, as per our finding, usage of gadgets is one of the main reasons for accidents as the driver/pedestrian is unable to listen to the sound of the oncoming train. People become negligent to the dangers while having their gadgets on. We wanted to address this cause which has not been given due attention yet."

According to reports, there are over 10,000 unmanned railway crossings across the country and several people lose their lives every year at these crossings.