ARCHIVEThe Noise Side - 3M | Clapboard Ad Archive
3M’s The Noise Side campaign, launched in France in 2012 by The Fishe, exemplifies the kind of...
Trident Traffic Police Shows How a Smile Gets You Out of Trouble
Trident's 'Traffic Police' is a 2013 Colombian film campaign created by Saatchi & Saatchi Bogotá that uses a lighthearted parking encounter between a woman and a traffic officer to position Trident Total Gum as the source of a smile confident enough to charm anyone out of a fine.
Published in Colombia in July 2013, the campaign centres on a single film asset built around one crystalline product truth: a great smile is a social superpower. The creative premise requires no product demonstration in the conventional sense. Instead, it dramatises the outcome — the moment when an attractive, self-assured smile does what words cannot. A woman struggles with a difficult parking manoeuvre, drawing the attention of a traffic officer. Rather than argue or apologise, she simply smiles at him. He lets her go. The connection to Trident Total Gum and its promise of a smile worth having is left for the audience to complete, a technique that rewards engagement and lodges the brand association firmly in memory.
The campaign was developed for Trident Total Gum and released in the Colombian market, where Saatchi & Saatchi's Bogotá office led creative development under General Creative Director Juan Pablo Navas. The film sits within the health and wellness advertising category, framing oral care not as a clinical concern but as a confidence enabler with tangible, everyday social stakes. The Clapboard Score for 'Traffic Police' stands at 67 out of 100, reflecting a competent and culturally grounded execution with clear strategic logic.
Trident Total Gum's 'Traffic Police' campaign is built on a consumer insight rooted in social dynamics rather than oral hygiene. The campaign's creative team at Saatchi & Saatchi Bogotá identified that the most resonant argument for a gum brand in the Colombian market was not clean teeth but social confidence — the felt sense that a great smile changes how others respond to you in everyday, unscripted moments.
This strategic positioning places 'Traffic Police' within a broader creative tradition of turning functional product benefits into emotional currency. The campaign does not ask the viewer to think about ingredients, whitening agents, or gum technology. It asks them to feel the relief and delight of a moment where a smile — presumably powered by Trident Total — resolved a problem that logic and argument could not. In Colombia, where interpersonal warmth and charm carry significant social weight, this framing is culturally precise rather than generic.
The chewing gum category in Colombia sits within a highly competitive confectionery and oral care landscape. According to confectionerynews.com, global chewing gum sales were valued at approximately US$26 billion in 2012, with growth of more than 14% over the preceding three years — a market in sustained expansion that placed a premium on brand differentiation beyond price or flavour. In that environment, campaigns capable of attaching emotional meaning to a low-involvement product like gum carried disproportionate strategic value. Saatchi & Saatchi Bogotá's decision to anchor 'Traffic Police' in a recognisable, humorous social scenario gave Trident Total a culturally specific edge in a crowded category.
The creative execution of 'Traffic Police' is elegant in its economy. The film presents a single, self-contained scenario: a woman makes a difficult parking manoeuvre badly enough to attract the attention of a traffic police officer in Colombia. As he approaches her car, clearly prepared to issue a fine or correction, she turns to face him and offers a smile of disarming confidence. He pauses, reconsiders, and lets her go. The scene closes on the product benefit without ever stating it aloud — the smile, implied to be the gift of Trident Total Gum, does the work entirely on its own terms.
That compression of storytelling into a single turning-point moment is a hallmark of effective short-form film advertising, and the team assembled for 'Traffic Police' was well suited to deliver it. Director Alejandro Carreño led the on-screen realisation through production company Los Notarios, bringing a light comedic touch that keeps the film warm rather than smug. The creative direction was led by Juan Pablo Navas as General Creative Director, with Juan Carlos González and Margarita Olivar serving as Creative Directors. González also handled copywriting duties, while Olivar served as art director — a pairing that kept the verbal and visual registers tightly unified. Producer Nathalie Burnside oversaw production logistics for the single-asset campaign. Post-production and visual finishing were handled through Laika Studio, completing the core creative team behind this Bogotá-originated work.
The decision to build the campaign around one media asset rather than a broader multi-format rollout concentrates all creative energy into a single, shareable film moment — a structurally sound choice for a campaign reliant on the audience completing the brand association themselves.
No verified performance data for 'Traffic Police' — including reach figures, recall scores, or sales uplift — is publicly available from named third-party sources. No verified awards are documented at Cannes Lions, the Effies, or other major industry award bodies according to available records on Little Black Book and adruby.com.
Structural analysis of the campaign, however, points to a genuinely effective creative architecture. The single-film format demands that every second of screen time carry both narrative and brand weight, and the 'Traffic Police' execution meets that requirement. The comedic scenario is immediately legible to a Colombian audience, the emotional payoff is clean and unambiguous, and the product benefit — a smile that changes outcomes — is dramatised rather than stated. These are the hallmarks of work that earns attention in a low-involvement category where most communications are ignored.
The Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100 for 'Traffic Police' reflects a campaign that achieves its core objective with craft and cultural fluency but stops short of the category-defining originality that pushes scores into the upper quartile. The creative premise, while well executed, operates within a familiar charm-and-confidence territory that the gum category has explored broadly. Within the Colombian market context of 2013, the work represents a solid, strategically coherent contribution to Trident Total's brand positioning.
Trident's 'Traffic Police' is a 2013 Colombian film created by Saatchi & Saatchi Bogotá. It shows a woman escaping a parking fine by giving a traffic officer a confident, winning smile. The scene links Trident Total Gum to social confidence and the idea that a great smile changes everyday outcomes in your favour.
Saatchi & Saatchi Bogotá created the campaign. General Creative Director Juan Pablo Navas led the team, with Juan Carlos González and Margarita Olivar as Creative Directors. Director Alejandro Carreño shot the film through production company Los Notarios, with producer Nathalie Burnside overseeing production and Laika Studio handling post-production.
The campaign was released in Colombia in July 2013. It was produced by Saatchi & Saatchi's Bogotá office specifically for the Colombian market, positioning Trident Total Gum through a culturally grounded, humorous scenario involving a traffic police officer and a woman's confident smile.
Trident's 'Traffic Police' holds a Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100. The score reflects a culturally grounded, structurally sound execution with clear strategic logic, while indicating that the creative premise operates within familiar territory for the gum category rather than breaking genuinely new ground.
No verified awards for 'Traffic Police' are documented at major industry bodies. Available records on lbbonline.com and adruby.com confirm no recognised wins at Cannes Lions or the Effies. The campaign nonetheless demonstrates strong creative craft and strategic coherence within the Colombian oral care advertising landscape in 2013.
The campaign advertises Trident Total Gum in the Colombian market. Rather than focusing on functional oral care attributes, the film positions Trident Total as the enabler of a confident, attractive smile — one powerful enough to resolve a real social situation, illustrated through a charming traffic police encounter.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
