KIDS IN THE CAR How research helped create a compelling road safety campaign and a world first. CATEGORY: 1.2 Marketing Planning – Resources, Research and Insights
By age 4 their brains are almost fully developed. What kind of driver are you teaching your child to be?
AUTHORS: Claire Wood
WORD COUNT: 1,593
KIDS IN THE CAR: HOW RESEARCH HELPED CREATE A COMPELLING ROAD SAFETY CAMPAIGN AND A WORLD FIRST
T
he Scottish Government wants Scotland’s children to have the best start in life. Good parenting is crucial to this.1 And this extends to setting a good example around road use during a child’s formative years to encourage safer driving habits in later life.
Experts in road safety confirm that education needs to begin long before driving lessons:
“ FOSTERING AND PROMOTING THE BENEFITS OF GOOD PARENTING MUST BE AT THE HEART OF DEVELOPING THE POTENTIAL OF OUR YOUNG PEOPLE.”
‘In order to be effective, road user education needs to start a long time before young people learn to drive in order to over-ride potentially risky pre-existing preferences and expectations’.2
The Police are in agreement 3 as are the IAM Motoring Trust who confirm that
Joining the dots, Professor Susan Deacon, 2010/11
“ YOUNG DRIVERS ARE MADE, NOT BORN” 4 So could we influence the drivers of the future by encouraging parents to consider the example they’re setting in car now?
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Scottish Government Early Years Framework. Cradle Attitudes – Grave Consequences, A Waylen & Frank McKenna. ‘Early intervention with road safety messages to target future road users is essential…. attempting to change young road users’ opinions once they have reached driving age is extremely challenging’. Research published in 2008.
SETTING OBJECTIVES IN UNCHARTED TERRITORY The aim of Road Safety Scotland (RSS, part of Transport Scotland) and the Scottish Government is to reduce deaths on Scotland’s roads.5 Nearly half the UK’s drivers begin learning to drive aged 17 and many will be involved in an accident in the first two or three years.6 A third of the people killed in road accidents are under 25. Beyond road safety education in schools, experts were unsure about how to tackle this.
The Scottish Government and RSS briefed us to create a campaign to: • Raise awareness amongst parents of their role in modelling the future road use, behaviours and attitudes of their children • Consequently, motivate them to assess their own driving behaviour and curb risky and aggressive driving in their childrens’ presence; and • Ultimately, reduce the risky behaviours of tomorrow’s new drivers. However, they were conscious that an earlier stage of campaign activity might be necessary to convince parents that intervention at such an early age was valuable. We needed to set out emotionally motivating and compelling reasons why curbing risky driving behaviour when children are in the car is both important and beneficial.
USING RESEARCH TO ILLUMINATE THE BRIEF a) Quantitative research
b) Ethnography
The first task was to uncover whether we needed to persuade parents that their behaviour in car would make a difference to their child’s attitudes.
To have a fighting chance of achieving this, we needed to get under the skin of how parents perceived their behaviour in car. We commissioned ethnographic research; accompanied drives with parents and children followed by detailed discussion back home.
An omnibus question appeared to answer this, showing that 80% of parents thought their children’s driving would be influenced by their own driving.7 Rationally, parents appreciated that their behaviour made a difference. But this raised a new challenge. People don’t like being told they’re doing something badly – and particularly resent being told they’re driving badly. For this campaign to work, we needed to highlight the risky behaviours demonstrated in car by parents when their children were present.
This highlighted three things: • As suspected, parents tended to think they were excellent drivers • But children were well aware of their parent’s misdemeanours • Crucially, parents imagined they were in a bubble in the driver’s seat; that their children paid no attention to their exploits therein. Any bad behaviour, in their heads, went unobserved. Their emotional reaction to be being in the car, to the pressure of driving, overrode their rational understanding. This insight revealed the task for communications activity. To trigger amongst parents the ‘lightbulb’ moment of realisation: that their behaviour in car was observed and furthermore, was shaping their child’s attitudes towards road safety.
This had never been done before so we had no roadmap. We turned instead to research to determine how we might tackle this brief.
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As outlined in the Scottish Government Road Safety Framework to 2020. The New Driver Project, W.B. Carcary, K.G. Power & F.A.Murray, Scottish Executive 2001. Quantitative research amongst parents in Scotland, 2CV, December 2012.
“When you think of how often they are in the car with you, every day, it seems obvious. But I would never have thought of it before you brought it up.” 8 Parent verbatim, January 2013 We also refined the optimum target audience. The younger the child, the more sceptical the parent about message absorption. The older the child, the more likely that their attitudes towards road safety were entrenched. We decided to narrow our focus to parents of children aged four to eight. Then we could shape our campaign proposition: Your child starts learning to drive as soon as you put them in a car.
c) Qualitative research How to unlock that thought and persuade a complacent audience that they don’t always set a good example when they’re in the car with their children?
At last, a breakthrough. To supplement the facts, the moderators showed parents drawings done by kids in the ethnography, depicting their car journeys. These showed that even the youngest children noticed mummy and daddy’s driving misdemeanours.
In further research, we showed parents evidence to prompt re-evaluation:
At first sight, the parents crumbled, acknowledging that what was true in every other area of life, was just as true in the car. The ‘lightbulb’ worked, giving us the emotive effect needed to cut through parents’ utter conviction that they set a good example to their children at all times. The bubble had been burst.
• Proof that in-car behaviour influences a child’s future driving behaviour • Evidence of how quickly a child develops: by age four, a child’s brain is 90% of its adult size • Casualty and fatality rates among young drivers. And quickly hit a brick wall. Again, parents bought into the impact of their behaviour in theory but in practice, struggled to believe their children were paying attention – back to the bubble effect seen in the ethnography.
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Qualitative research amongst parents in Scotland, 2CV, January 2013.
GREEN FOR GO
Radio Script Various kids: THE WHEELS ON THE CAR GO ROUND AND ROUND. ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND.
A clear brief helped our creatives develop a handful of ideas that were tested in research. The closest rendition of the brief proved by far the most effective at triggering this lightbulb moment.
AMBER LIGHT’S GONNA CHANGE NOT GONNA SLOW DOWN, ALL DAY LONG. TAKE A LOOK AROUND THEN ANSWER MY PHONE, ANSWER MY PHONE, ANSWER MY PHONE.
SCRIPTS TV Script
IF NO-ONE’S AROUND I CAN SPEED MY WAY HOME, ALL DAY LONG. THE STUPID OLD MAN SHOULD GET OFF THE ROAD, GET OFF THE ROAD, GET OFF THE ROAD. IF HE DOESN’T DO THAT I’M GONNA EXPLODE, ALL DAY LONG. VO:
We see a wee boy in a cute red jumper, he sings: THE WHEELS ON THE CAR GO ROUND AND ROUND… A little girl with a gap in her teeth sings: ROUND AND ROUND, ROUND AND ROUND. We cut to a wee guy with crazy hair he sings: AMBER LIGHT’S GONNA CHANGE NOT GONNA SLOW DOWN. A prim little girl sings: ALL DAY LONG. We see cuts of more kids as they continue to sing the song: TAKE A LOOK AROUND THEN ANSWER MY PHONE, ANSWER MY PHONE, ANSWER MY PHONE. IF NO-ONE’S AROUND I CAN SPEED MY WAY HOME, ALL DAY LONG. The children start to get angry and frustrated: THE STUPID OLD MAN SHOULD GET OFF THE ROAD, GET OFF THE ROAD, GET OFF THE ROAD, IF HE DOESN’T DO THAT I’M GONNA EXPLODE… We now cut to three different kids cutely singing a word each for the final: ALL DAY LONG. VO:
BY AGE FOUR THEIR BRAINS ARE ALMOST FULLY DEVELOPED. WHAT KIND OF DRIVER ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR CHILD TO BE?
We cut to an end frame with the Safer Scotland logo, Don’t Risk It URL and super: SUPER:
WHAT KIND OF DRIVER ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR CHILD TO BE?
TV endframe
BY AGE FOUR THEIR BRAINS ARE ALMOST FULLY DEVELOPED. WHAT KIND OF DRIVER ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR CHILD TO BE? VISIT DONTRISKIT.INFO
POSTERS POSTERS A4s / A3s
A4s / A3s
DIGITAL BANNERS DIGITAL BANNERS DIGITAL / leaderboard MPUMPU / leaderboard
MPU / leaderboard
Website
TV, radio including a media partnership with Bauer and online display advertising, all negotiated by Carat, launched on 24 July, designed to intercept the tail end of the school holidays. Children’s drawings brought the idea to life in posters and print including supermarket trolleys.
A stand displaying children’s artwork toured Scotland, accompanied by an art station to occupy kids while their parents chatted to field staff. All children’s pictures were uploaded to the Facebook page.
CREATING TOMORROW’S DRIVERS, TODAY The campaign made a significant impression; 83% of parents in tracking research remembered the campaign. An impressive 57% of respondents spontaneously recalled the radio activity. A tribute in part to the Bauer partnership which delivered £12,508 of value through on-air, email and social coverage on top of the paid-for media.
Critically, 75% of the campaign audience expected to make changes to their behaviour, rising to 83% amongst parents prone to risky driving behaviours.
Incredibly, given the complexity of the message, 68% of respondents clearly explained our objectives:
(Those who didn’t express an interest in changing felt they were considering their in-car behaviour, already.)
• 28% said the campaign was about “being more aware when driving with children”
An estimated 7.8 million people spotted the trolley posters in ASDA. The cut through was substantial as the posters are usually taken by FMCG brands.
• 36% said it was about children watching and being influenced by your behaviour; and • 21% said it was about being careful when driving.
We partnered with Arnold Clark, Visit Scotland, Direct Line, Historic Scotland, John Lewis, Mothercare, Bounty, Mumsnet and ASDA to reach as wide an audience as possible.
The campaign scored a very high level of motivation to change amongst respondents: 85%, increasing to 91% amongst people who drove frequently with children.
Digital display activity generated 4.5 million impressions, 9,589 clicks and an average click through rate to Whitespace’s website of 0.22%. All excellent performance results and a measure of the value that parents felt the campaign delivered.
The field marketing proved extremely effective. An estimated 129,505 people visited the stand and 96% were prompted to change their behaviour.9 Over 20,000 leaflets, colouring sheets and chillout CDs were distributed over 30 dates. “I’ve just been looking at the drawings. I’m quite shocked at some of the things kids pick up on.” “You don’t realise they are watching your every move.” “I’ve just heard the radio ad. My kids were singing along and then said, ‘mum, that’s you!’ ” 10
We can’t measure the number of people exposed to the partnership activity. But 60,000 leaflets and 3,663 posters were distributed across partner organisations. The Bounty email reached 67,000 parents in Scotland. Overall, partnership activity had an estimated value of £157,036 and an ROI of 13:1. PR activity orchestrated by Stripe resulted in 35 articles about the campaign with just over 16 million opportunities to see, delivering a return on investment of 24:1.
CREATING A HABIT THAT CAN SAVE LIVES This campaign was born out of a twofold ambition: to give Scotland’s children the best start in life. And to reduce the risky behaviours of tomorrow’s new drivers.
We can’t measure the effect that this campaign will have on drivers of the future. But we’ve estimated that to date, this activity has prevented 20 accidents, delivering a return on social marketing investment of £4.80 for every £1 spent.
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TNS-BMRB tracking research, October 2013. Visitors to stand, Edinburgh / Perth, July 2013.
We’re not in a position to measure the impact on a new generation of drivers but the resulting campaign persuaded 85% of parents that action is necessary now. So Scotland’s roads will be a safer place as a consequence. Not a bad result for a world first.