National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) — Public Safety Campaigns Across Emerging Media
Executive Summary
Since 2023, I led creative direction for NHTSA digital awareness campaigns focused on impaired driving, traffic safety, and public education across display, connected TV, DCO, and interactive media.
Working closely with the client and their media agency, I oversaw campaign creative across bilingual executions designed to communicate serious public safety messaging while still earning attention in crowded digital environments.
The work required balancing strict government guidelines, accessibility standards, and bilingual requirements with more modern, engaging approaches to storytelling, including motion-led creative, gamified formats, and select interactive and emerging media executions such as an augmented reality unit built for Cadent.
Beyond execution, the partnership became a long-term account relationship that contributed to the agency’s successful rebid for continued business.
The Challenge
Public safety advertising presents a core creative challenge: how to get audiences to engage with messaging they are conditioned to ignore.
For NHTSA, every concept had to meet strict government standards and accessibility requirements while working across English and Spanish versions without losing clarity or consistency.
At the same time, the campaigns carried real-world stakes. The objective was not just engagement, but increasing awareness around impaired driving and traffic safety behaviors through work that felt clear, memorable, and emotionally resonant without becoming overly fear-based or clinical.
My Role: Senior Design Director
I led creative direction across the account, managing and reviewing campaign execution in close collaboration with the client, internal teams, and the media agency.
My responsibilities included:
Guiding creative across display, DCO, CTV, and interactive formats
Developing concepts that balanced engagement with strict government requirements
Overseeing bilingual creative execution (English/Spanish)
Reviewing and refining campaign creative across multiple formats
Collaborating directly with the media agency’s creative team
Participating in production for the 2023 impaired driving campaign shoot
Supporting the long-term client relationship that contributed to the agency’s rebid
Results & Impact
From 2024–2025, the NHTSA account grew 12.8% year-over-year, increasing from $5.6M to $6.3M. Creative work directly supported approximately $4.5M in annual revenue and played a key role in sustaining the long-term client partnership.
The work also helped:
Strengthen the agency’s ongoing relationship with NHTSA
Support the agency’s successful rebid for continued business
Expand capabilities in interactive and emerging media within government campaigns
Demonstrate how awareness campaigns can remain engaging within highly regulated environments
Key Takeaway
This work reflects my ability to lead creative within highly regulated environments while still pushing for ideas that feel modern and audience-aware. By balancing compliance requirements with strong storytelling and selective use of interactive and emerging formats, I helped evolve public safety messaging into more engaging digital campaign work across multiple platforms.
