just like that
Tony Hocking, Senior Consultant of independent research company, EMRS. 92% unprompted campaign recall, a 25% decrease in serious road injuries between 2002 and 2006, and the first ever fatality-free Christmas holiday period – just like that!
Prior to being awarded the Road Safety account in 1999, the agency strategy read: “Road safety has become a ‘secondary thing’. We assume nothing is going to go wrong. We want to shake this assumption loose and plant deeply a seed of doubt that can spread into every road user’s daily life.”
In 2000, Tasmanian road safety was in crisis, with particularly poor death and injury figures for young men and people who lived in rural areas. As in other States, speed and drink driving were major problems, along with inattention and fatigue. But research showed that the public, especially the core target groups mentioned above, were not engaged, were in fact blatantly ignoring, the predictable road safety messages of the time.
The Road Safety Task Force Strategic Plan outlined the need to educate the public that driver safety was a matter of personal responsibility, and that the young were a critical target.
Our 2000-2006 ‘just like that’ campaign became Tasmania’s most recognised and widely embraced public sector advertising campaign ever, and
not only because it won numerous international creative awards year in, year out.
The ‘just like that’ brand and finger snap graphic were immediately adopted by the community, and within two months of the launch it was obvious to both client and agency that the public’s involvement with the campaign was unprecedented. It had one of the highest recalls on record, with 92% of the total population recalling the ‘just like that’ message unprompted. 75% of the rural population said that the campaign influenced their driving behaviour.
Independent research from South Australia University documented that it contributed to a reduction of between 12 and 18% in serious road crashes during the first three years, the first fatality-free Christmas holiday period since records began, a 25% decrease in serious injuries (despite a 15% increase in the number of vehicles on Tasmanian roads), plus many other significant, quantifiable results across all measured indicators, including lower injury claims and increased funding based on the campaign’s success. It was even adopted for use in Victoria and the ACT.
Green Team Australia’s successful campaign was the result of recognising the critical difference between community engagement and conventional advertising approaches. Between 2000 and 2006 the agency delivered a brand and a campaign for road safety in Tasmania that has been widely acknowledged as one of the most successful (of any kind) on record.
more work
