LegalShield is using ridiculous state laws to highlight legal services as you travel

A new campaign from legal services provider LegalSheld and navigation app Waze combines comedy and law, spotlighting some of the more idiosyncratic or ridiculous U.S. laws to show how it can help people with their legal needs. 

LegalShield’s partnership with Waze brings a special route experience along one of the country’s busiest routes and the main interstate highway that connects the East Coast all the way from New York to Florida, the I-95. Each time users cross a new state border on I-95, they'll be shown a “stupid law” from that state along with encouragement for drivers to "Be Legal Ready" with LegalShield. Concepted by The Martin Agency and brokered by Mediahub, the collaboration is the first-of-its-kind branded route for Waze. 

The campaign also includes a series of comedic spots created by The Martin Agency, marking the brand's first work since both Martin and Mediahub became agencies of record. The ads will run on YouTube, Zeta, and across social platforms.

Directed by Swedish music video director Vedran Rupic, the 15 and 30-second ads humorously dramatize such unusual laws like Massachusetts not allowing animals to ride in the back of the car unbuckled, Washington’s ban on harassing a sasquatch, requiring a permit to control the weather in Colorado or it being illegal to advertise in a cemetery in North Carolina.

The ads end with the line: "Some laws are stupid" before going on to explain that getting legal help about the issue is highlighted in the spot is not. 

The legal industry felt very cold and stuffy, so we wanted to change the tone of that. If lawyers can have a sense of humor and be a little self-deprecating, it suddenly makes them a lot more approachable," says The Martin Agency Creative Director Dave Gibson.

The branded effort comes in time for the holiday travel season, with Waze hoping to capitalize off of the millions of people traveling for Thanksgiving this year. 

“The custom Waze program leverages a layered targeting approach to identify those drivers who are traveling outside of their daily routines and along I-95, a major route that’s one of the most trafficked for the holidays,” said Jacob Frost, VP, Media Director of Mediahub.

The campaign also comes after Waze CMO Harris Beber shared that the Google-owned app would be looking into more hyper-local ad-selling along with big sponsorship deals such as co-sponsored pilots—branded entertainment integration in Waze maps.