Creative Direction & Concept Development: Thomas Carr & Derbáil Kinsella False Focus is a behavioural change road safety campaign designed to disrupt how young drivers think about fatigue. Targeting 16-24 year old apprentices in NSW, one of the highest risk groups for fatigue-related crashes, the campaign interrogates a dangerously common misconception: the belief that energy drinks can “fix” tiredness behind the wheel. Despite being as dangerous as drink driving, fatigue remains largely unregulated, contributing to an estimated 67 deaths and 645 serious injuries every year in NSW alone. Through primary research, surveys, interviews, and direct conversations with TAFE apprentices, we uncovered the uncomfortable truth: fatigue was normalised. 76% of respondents admitted they had knowingly driven tired in the last three months, over half believed caffeine could counteract tiredness, and stories of micro-sleeps were alarmingly common. Driving after 17 hours awake impairs performance at a similar level to a 0.05 BAC, yet awareness among young drivers remains extremely low. Our strategic leap was to hijack the visual language of the very product that fuels that myth: energy drink culture. We built a fictional beverage brand, False Focus, playful, bold, high-energy and culturally fluent, only to weaponise it against itself. Vibrant colour, strong typography and an explosive product shot revealed the real truth: energy in a can won’t save you from a crash. The result reframed a youth-coded cultural symbol into a behavioural warning young drivers couldn’t easily dismiss. The campaign won the Re:Act NSW brief and was selected for live execution across the state. Working with Transport for NSW, Re:Act, TAFE NSW and oOh!media, we developed the full creative from insight to rollout, not just the visuals, but a strategically grounded public safety message built to shift behaviour, not just attention. False Focus ran across 108 oOh!media digital screens, reaching 1,557,700 people with a media value of $1,878,079 over a month period. A digital extension directed viewers to falsefocus.com.au for further education and fatigue awareness. By merging insight, humour, cultural fluency and visual irony, False Focus proved that design-led creativity can not only look good, but drive real world behaviour change at scale. This project was a turning point for both of us, a campaign built end-to-end from research, to strategy, to concept, to design, and then released into the world.