Geotab
The Incident Detective
A fleet safety manager thinks every incident is a conspiracy.
Watch the full campaign · 1:22
The Strategy
Geotab connects company vehicles to the internet. A small device tracks how each truck or van is driven, and Geotab turns that data into tools that help fleets run safer and cheaper. Most fleet managers knew it as the data company, the one with the plug-in device. This campaign had to make them think of Geotab for safety.
Its newest safety tools look ahead. They use data from millions of vehicles to spot which drivers are most likely to have a collision, so a manager can step in before it happens. The old way works backward: a scorecard, a dash cam clip and a report, all filed after the damage is done. Geotab wanted fleet managers to let that go, without scaring them into it. Its rivals sold safety with fear. Geotab wanted to stand apart.
We brought three ways in, and built the campaign on the first: stop investigating, start preventing. Fleet managers spend more time cleaning up after incidents than stopping them. They've become crash historians, not safety managers.
Then we wrote four ideas, and Geotab picked the Incident Detective: a fleet safety manager so buried in incident reports that he works every one like a murder case. Geotab gave us three notes. No crashes on screen, so the ones our first draft piled up outside his window came out. Say "incident," not "crash." And don't make the manager look clueless. He isn't. He's overworked, stuck with tools that only tell him what already went wrong. Those notes shaped every spot.
The 30-second main spot opens in Alex's office. Red folders cover every surface. The days-without-incident counter reads zero. A sleeping bag lies on the floor, beside a wall of photos, documents and red string. Then Luis, the fleet coordinator, walks in with another folder.
The 15-second teaser goes back to a stormy night: rain on the window, Alex alone with a mug of coffee and one more case. The 15-second follow-up sits him down with Luis and a laptop. Three 6-second reminders show the office after: a counter that finally climbs, a clean desk, and the red folders on their way out.
The Process
We shot it in a studio over two days, counting the prep day. The office is built entirely from our own flats, the movable walls we keep for sets like this.
The look is corporate noir: a detective movie, set in an ordinary office. Night scenes get hard, moody light. Day scenes are brighter and softer.
The storm is all practical. Two of us stood on a ladder outside the window, squeezing soda bottles full of water. Small holes drilled in the caps turned each bottle into a stream of rain, and a big tub below caught the runoff. Real blinds and gobos, cutouts that throw shadow patterns from a light, gave the office its eerie, moonlit glow. Our gaffer flashed the lightning from our lighting rig.
The coffee grounds are real too. Our actor ate them on camera, fully committed to the bit.
We delivered a 30-second main spot, two 15s and three 6-second reminders, in widescreen, square and vertical, with and without subtitles.
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