Our new initiative for the Alabama Department of Transportation, “Code of the Road,” invites drivers ages 18-34 to embrace safer habits behind the wheel. Unlike typical campaigns, it partners with drivers, emphasizing education over showcasing accidents. Tested through focus groups and surveys, its tailored messaging resonates with the younger audience, encouraging responsible driving.
There’s a Code of the Road, and knowing it helps you follow it.
The Alabama Department of Transportation, through its Drive Safe Alabama initiative, educates drivers about safe behavior when behind the wheel. For our campaign titled “Code of the Road,” the approach isn’t about showing horrible outcomes of bad driving behavior but suggesting a partnership with drivers to help them understand some rules of the road that will keep everyone safe. There are more than 40,000 vehicle crashes each year on Alabama roads, and most of those crashes are preventable just by following the “Code of the Road.” We’re inviting people to learn the codes of the road and stick to them for everyone’s safety.
Target Audience
The campaign is targeting Alabama drivers ages 18-34. Focus groups and online digital surveys were employed to test the campaign messaging that resonated best with our younger target audience.
Objectives
- Create clever messaging that breaks through for our 18-34 age audience.
- Focus on safe driving initiatives that include distracted driving, speeding, drunk driving, and seat belts.
- Introduce to Alabama a “Driving While High” initiative due to the increased frequency of marijuana use while driving. Man-on-the-street videos were created to educate our target audiences about the dangers of driving while high.
View other videos in the playlist in order, or select the dropdown menu at the top right of the video screen to choose a specific video.
Delivery
- Using a series of 15-second videos, messages are delivered digitally through CTV/OTT, pre-roll, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and streaming audio.
- Statewide billboards deliver messages to drivers when they may actually be breaking the rules of safe driving.
- Cross-device display and interstitial banner ads target teen drivers and college students.
- Campaign social platform cover graphics and branded posts, in addition to videos on Facebook and Instagram, are designed to increase followers.
Out-of-Home delivered a mix of several messages addressing common dangerous driving behaviors.
Social Paid and Organic Media used humor to point out the absurdity of making dangerous choices.
In just two weeks of running the campaign, there were almost 1.13 million total impressions. Reddit had almost 70k impressions with a .59% click-through rate (CTR), and the Man on the Street OTT videos had over 60k impressions with a .64% CTR. The mobile interstitial ads had almost 130k impressions with 2.36% CTR!
(The industry average display ad CTR hovers at around 0.1%. –Bannerflow.com)
Services
- Behavioral Targeting
- Brand Awareness & Strategy
- Branding
- Campaign Development & Management
- Copywriting
- Digital Strategy & Marketing
- Art Direction & Graphic Design
- Media Planning & Management
- Research Interpretation
- Social Media Management & Listening
- Videography
Stickers with fun messaging are given to teens at Drive Safe events.
“The traffic safety media campaigns and videos look wonderful. They are very engaging and interactive.”
— Amanda Jackson, Regional Program Manager for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration