10 Sep 08
The Scottish Government (ACPOS) - "The Morning After"
Driving Real Engagement To Cause Real Change
Campaign Background
Government statistics show that approximately 1 in 5 Scottish Drivers have driven over the limit and that Drink Driving still accounts for around 30 fatalities and 170 injuries on Scotland’s roads every year, despite a huge effort at communicating the dangers involved in getting behind the wheel of a car while under the influence of alcohol.
The Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland (ACPOS), recognised this and realised that they needed to find a way to force the motorists of Scotland to reassess the risk of being caught for drink driving.
ACPOS wanted to toughen its approach to drink driving by changing current practice to allow for the presumption to breath test all motorists who were stopped for any moving traffic offence. This meant that an offence as innocuous as failing to put on your seatbelt could result in you being stopped and breathalysed.
The intention behind this new measure was simple – it sent a clear message to Scottish motorists that said “Don’t risk it”.
Campaign Brief
The brief from the Scottish Government and Road Safety Scotland, working with ACPOS, was to provide support for the Scottish Police Service’s two week pilot of the new proposed policy.
We were tasked with delivering against two objectives-
1. To make Scottish motorists aware that, over the two week period of the campaign, a new policy was in place that would increase their chances of being caught drink driving and, in doing so, get them to review their “risk audit”.
2. To capture the Scottish public’s reaction to the proposed change in policy, in order gauge public support for a permanent roll-out.
Campaign Audience
From our research we identified a significant moral majority who would never dream of getting into the car while drunk during a night out. However, they currently thought nothing of getting behind the wheel of their cars the morning after they had had a “skinful” to take their kids to school or get to work. In essence, this group were often unconscious offenders.
The morning after was identified as the best time for communicating with this group. This was when the campaign message would achieve the best resonance and relevance, when they might feel more paranoid about being over the limit and therefore feel most at risk of being caught for drink driving.
Campaign Implementation
Using our audience insights, we based the implementation strategy around the morning after period:
- we would follow our audience through their morning routine, delivering our campaign message to them in their cars on their way to work, in their morning news emails and through their favourite online channels.
We used two key media to deliver our campaign messages – radio and online – and the synergistic relationship that we leveraged between these media would prove to be a crucial dynamic in generating the results that we delivered.
In addition to the activity that we ran on our selected radio stations, we also partnered with Scottish websites to increase our campaign’s pan-Scotland cover. The sites chosen to deliver these mass engagement opportunities were the Scotsman.com, theherald.co.uk and stv.tv, Scotland’s largest websites. We also partnered with Fast & Modified to reach younger Scottish men.
In conjunction with the client and its PR Agency, IASSmarts, each website partner produced an advertorial feature which outlined the proposed change in policy. These features cited 14 moving traffic offences (eg. Broken tail light, speeding) that could result in the driver being stopped and breathalysed, in order to illustrate the increased risk that motorists would face if they drove the morning after. The features all allowed users to post their opinions on the initiative and vote on two polls.
Each day the features were promoted in both the sites morning e-newsletters and also against relevant content (sport, motoring, news) using editorial “puffs”. Each day copy was refreshed in the e-newsletters and the editorial puffs to highlight a new moving traffic offence, thereby conveying the scope of the increased risk of being caught. Rotating copy in this way also increased the personal relevancy of the messages which would, in turn, improve response rates.
We recorded a media first with Scotsman.com, being the first client to advertise inside the comments boxes that appear against their articles. This was crucial in allowing us to directly engage with opinionated Scots.
The features were refreshed in week two of the campaign to ensure that we maintained interest in the debate and to give us the opportunity to react to issues raised by users in week one, adding a crucial “live” element to the campaign.
Campaign Results
Awareness
Our online activity delivered over 20.2 million editorial puffs and newsletter emails, reaching every morning visitor to our partner websites over the campaign period. This amounted to reaching over 940,000 unique Scottish users – over a third of online Scots.
Engagement
The online editorial features were viewed by over 58,000 Scots.
The campaign also delivered handsomely on its remit to gauge public opinion generating 13,633 votes on the listener/reader polls that we ran. In addition, the campaign sparked sufficient interest to encourage over 600 written comments on our online forums.
Creation of PR collateral
The campaign delivery did not stop at driving awareness and generating engagement. The voting results and comments left by the Scottish public provided a gold mine of PR collateral which was used following the initial campaign period to generate additional publicity for the campaign.
Using elements of the data captured by the online activity, IASmarts were able to leverage additional national TV and press coverage to the value of £125,000, effectively paying for the campaign three times over!
