A TOWN CALLED SPEEDKILLS

TitleA TOWN CALLED SPEEDKILLS
BrandTRANSPORT ACCIDENT COMMISSION
Product / ServiceRURAL SPEEDING AWARENESS
CategoryA02. Best Use of Social Media
EntrantNAKED COMMUNICATIONS Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company:NAKED COMMUNICATIONS Sydney, AUSTRALIA
PR/Advertising Agency:NAKED COMMUNICATIONS Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Adam Ferrier Naked Communications Planning Partner
Paul Swann Naked Communications Head of Ideas
Sesh Moodley Naked Communications Creative Director
Anna O'Donoughue Naked Communications Creative
Renata Gordon Naked Communications Expression manager
John Thompson TAC Marketing Senior Manager

The Campaign

Speeding on rural roads is a major issue in Australia. In the state of Victoria speed-related deaths had increased 20% in the last year. The TAC is tasked to reduce this figure but people are becoming desensitised to shock-style government advertising. We wanted to utilize PR and social media to more effectively make our point about the dangers of rural speeding and to get people to slow down. We joined forces with the tiny rural town of Speed (population 45). They agreed to change their town's name to SpeedKills if enough people liked the idea on Facebook. By 'Liking' the campaign the community was 'voicing' their objection to rural speeding and letting speeders know that their behaviour was totally unacceptable. We produced a Facebook page and created videos to populate it. The videos exclusively featured the townsfolk, no scripts, no actors, just real people telling their story of how speeding had affected them. We believed that this genuine approach would resonate with the media. The campaign exploded, catching the attention of social and broadcast media worldwide. And yes, Speed is now called SpeedKills.

The Brief

The initial goal was to get 10,000 people to publicly declare that they were against speeding by liking (on Facebook) the idea of the town of Speed changing its name to SpeedKills. We'd achieve this by targeting 'permissive speeders'; Australians who don't believe there's anything wrong with driving over the speed limit. We wanted to do something that could challenge this preconception, and would begin to make people think differently about the issue.

Results

$60,000 budget received millions of dollars worth of media exposure for the slow-down message. On Facebook, there were over 34,500 public declarations of people wanting others to slow down (a quarter of them young males). These declarations were viewed by 1,641,000 people. There were over 10,200,000 impressions of the message on Twitter. Not bad for a town of 45 people now called SpeedKills!

Execution

We created a series of videos featuring the townsfolk; no actors, no scripts, just real people telling their stories about speeding. The content populated our Facebook page, was posted on video sharing sites and dispatched to media outlets to generate PR. As we reached our initial target (10,000 likes) we created a new milestone: local resident Phil Down went on national radio and declared that he would change his name to Phil 'Slow' Down if the campaign reached 20,000 likes. Our facebook community spread the word; we asked them to pass round the videos, but also support us off-line, with bumper stickers and posters. The reveal of the town's new sign was the final milestone, again receiving significant levels of coverage, this time global media such as the BBC and Time Magazine, finally getting us to 34,500 likes in less than four weeks.

The Situation

Rural speeding is a big problem in Australia. With wide-open spaces between cities, drivers put their foot down, endangering themselves and those in rural communities. The Transport Accident Commission (TAC) is responsible for raising awareness of this issue and to date has used shock tactics, information or emotive advertising to get its message across. However, there was evidence that these methods weren't working: speed-related traffic deaths had increased by 20% in the last year. People had become desensitized to speeding messaging. We wanted to utilize PR and social media to communicate that the wider community was against speeding.

The Strategy

Our research into how behaviour change occurs told us that often a small action can trigger a larger change in attitude. It also told us that people look to others to determine the appropriate mode of behaviour, so if we could create a mass movement it might have a real impact on the road toll. Our strategy therefore was to create an anti speeding movement that everyone could rally around. To help us we found a tiny town called Speed (population 45), buried in the Australian outback. They agreed to change their town's name to SpeedKills if enough people liked the idea on Facebook. We believed that this movement would be one that the media and the community would want to support. Media coverage would be critical to spark awareness and drive initial traffic to the Facebook page, as well as providing additional spikes of awareness throughout the evolving campaign.