• by Les Luchter , November 3, 2022

In Stoneville, North Carolina, it’s illegal to advertise in a cemetery.

A pretty stupid law, right?

LegalShield, a D2C marketer of legal services, thinks so, and isn’t shy about letting viewers/consumers know about that cemetery restriction and other “Stupid Laws” in a humorous new campaign running through years’ end that includes both TV spots and the first branded travel route from the Waze satellite navigation service.

Sweden’s Vedran Rupic, known for music videos, directed the TV spots. He also wrote the rap tune featured in one of them: a 30-second vignette that finds a woman confronting a group of milk-loving, rap-battling sasquatches. “In Washington, it’s illegal to harass a Sasquatch,” the spot concludes. “Some laws are stupid. Having legal help with noisy neighbors is not.”

Another spot promotes legal help for traffic violations, with a cop pulling over a car driven by a beaver with other animals in the back seat (“In Massachusetts, it’s illegal to have unsecured animals in the back of a vehicle.”).

The cemetery advertising spot, which promotes legal help for creating wills, features a ghostly Pilgrim-like couple bemoaning the fact that they didn’t plan ahead for their descendants.

Those three, plus a fourth about wedding contracts, all come in :15 and :06 versions, with three of them also boasting :30 versions.

A fifth spot is on the way. It’s titled “Airplane,” so watch out!

The ads are running on YouTube, streaming services via the Zeta platform, and social channels (e.g., Meta, LinkedIn).

Waze’s new "Stupid Laws Route," yet to launch, identifies drivers traveling outside their daily routines on I-95, delivering a “stupid law” each time the driver enters any one of 10 different states from Florida to New York. For example, “Here in Maryland, it’s illegal to curse” and “Here in Pennsylvania, it’s illegal to sing in the street.” Those lines are followed by “Some laws are stupid. Having access to legal help is not. LegalShield.”

The Waze partnership was concepted and brokered by MediaHub, LegalShield’s new media agency.

Creative for the “Stupid Laws” campaign comes from the brand’s new creative shop, The Martin Agency, whose creative director Caroline Ekrem tells Marketing Daily that “there are lots of stupid laws on the books. Our hope is to use the laws to spark conversation about why these things exist in the first place as well as the kind that might more commonly necessitate the need for legal advice.”

If this campaign doesn’t make you smile, be thankful you’re not in Pocatello, Idaho, where not smiling is illegal.