Road safety statistics from the Australian state of Victoria showed that speeding drivers were the biggest killers on rural roads. Speed was a factor in nearly 30% of all fatal collisions and the total cost of road trauma is estimated at $4 billion a year (VAGO report, 2006). Despite long-standing efforts to promote a safer driving message, this plea was not getting through to a large majority of the target audience.
The Transport Accident Commission (TAC) wanted to take a radically different approach to persuade people that speeding was just as socially unacceptable as drink driving in the Victoria community. The TAC was keen to trial new ways to get their message across and reduce death and serious injuries sustained on rural roads. The TAC realised that consumer media habits had changed and social media was now a dominant mechanic for sharing information. For the 2010/2011 summer season, the TAC wanted to create a new style of communication that used people as the departure point, as opposed to the end point for its communications. With a budget of just AUS$60,000 (= US$ 59,000) getting any message across would be an ambitious task.
Australians spend up to 90.5% of their social media time with Facebook (Nielsen 2010) so this was chosen as the central platform for the campaign.
Historically the TAC has attempted to change behaviour via rational messages, or emotive shock tactics. Both have proven to be effective. However, according to the science of cognitive behavioural psychology (also known as CBP) an even more powerful way to change behaviour is to get people to act immediately towards the long term behaviour change desired. If the TAC was going to get people to act on the slow down message it needed get them to take action. To ensure relevance and success, an idea was required that made the Victorian rural community central to the activity and was compelling enough to get people involved.
The rural town called Speed was chosen to become the face of the campaign. The central idea of the campaign would be to change the name from Speed to SpeedKills, but only if 10,000 'likes' were achieved on Facebook. Speed is a very small town with just 45 inhabitants. It is extremely isolated (407kms NW of Melbourne) and in the middle of wheat and sheep country, so there are lots of long straight roads. The residents were very used to cars speeding through the town and this was something they wanted this to change
It was integral to the campaign strategy that the execution seemed to come from Speed. Several pieces of documentary footage brought the town and its plight to life. These clips were hosted on a Facebook page and circulated as PR pieces to media. The Facebook page went live on 14th January with a story in the daily tabloid, The Herald Sun, followed by radio interviews with the TAC and Speed townsfolk. This led to a PR fanfare on the day of launch culminating in a two minute interview live from Speed with local resident Phil Down on the current affairs show 'The 7PM Project'.
By 11pm that night, the TAC had exceeded the target of 10,000 'likes'. The following month's activity was punctuated by several PR events (Phil Down changing his name to Phil 'Slow' Down/ the TAC upping their donation to the town in light of its achievements/ live media coverage from the town itself) culminating in an unveiling event in Speed of the new town sign to the townsfolk and media. By this stage, the campaign had achieved significant PR was picked up nationally across Australia, by the BBC and The New York Times.
Results
The 10,000 'likes' target on Facebook was achieved within 24 hours of the campaign start. The final total scored more than 34,500 likes, 255% beyond expectation.
SpeedKills became the seventh most liked non-profit cause-related page in the region, even though it was only live for six weeks .
Facebook Page members saw messages from the TAC an average of 47 times each. The campaign appeared on all free to air TV networks (Channels 2, 7, 9 10) and Foxtel (Sky and others). Each channel repeated the story several times. Newspaper mastheads picked the story up in print and online across Victoria, Australia, and around the world (including BBC & New York Times).
The estimated value of this media exposure is several millions of dollars. The campaign was publicised on Twitter and was tweeted over 5000 times, receiving over 10 million impressions.