Transport Accident Commission · Clemenger BBDO · Australia · October 2026
There are two ways to find out how well a motorcycle jacket protects you. One involves a crash. TAC’s ‘Shredmill’ offers the other: a treadmill with an abrasive belt that puts riders’ own gear through the punishment of a road slide. They stand safely beside it and watch their jacket take the damage. TAC doesn’t sell motorcycle clothing. It would quite like you to buy something that survives this.
The Challenge
Gear that looks protective can perform very differently in a crash, and price, brand, and appearance don't tell the whole story. TAC wanted Victorian riders to know about MotoCAP, a free, independent safety rating for motorcycle clothing, and to check their gear against it before buying or riding.
What They Did
For the Check Your Gear Before You Hit the Road campaign, Clemenger BBDO and MotoCAP scaled up MotoCAP's laboratory abrasion test into the Shredmill Road Surface Simulator. Real Victorian riders put their own gear on it, watch it shredded, then see it beside a MotoCAP five-star equivalent. Toby Pike of Finch directed films of riders' assumptions meeting the test, running across social and digital. The machine meets its biggest live audience at the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Phillip Island. Every demonstration points to MotoCAP.
Why It Works
TAC built its reputation showing drivers and riders the crash. Here it removes the rider and keeps the gear, which changes the audience's job: nobody has to imagine anything, they watch their own jacket fail. The side-by-side does the persuading, because a rating means more once you've seen what a low one looks like at speed. The smartest decision is the handover. Every test ends at someone else's free ratings, so the spectacle keeps working after the Grand Prix packs up.
Creative Deviance: Unexpectedness
Creative Deviance comes from Publicis London's How to Move the World study with Effie and System1, which names five levers that push work away from the safe middle. Road safety films show the crash. TAC puts the rider's jacket on a treadmill instead. The surprise has a purpose: riders watch the exact failure the campaign warns about, happening to their own gear, with nobody hurt.
The Tactic
Product Demonstrations and Torture Tests → Contextual Performance Tests
What to Steal
Test their kit, not yours. TAC proves its point with the audience's own possessions. When people overrate what they already own, put that exact thing under the test. A stranger's failed jacket is a statistic. Yours, shredded in front of you, is a reason to check the rating before you buy the next one.
The Question That Could Get You There
What is the hardest credible test of the promise?
Or, more pointedly: how could people watch the accident happen to their kit instead of to them?
