To help achieve New Zealand's National Road Safety Plan targets, a four-year package of road safety measures was adopted in 1995, supporting increased enforcement of drink driving, speed and seatbelt laws by a series of hard-hitting, graphic advertisements. The advertising is based on the successful TAC campaign, specifying a research-led strategy at every step. The advertising research defines target audiences within the alcohol, speed and seatbelt themes from crash patterns and driver attitudes. Concepts and near-final products are tested against target audiences. Once the advertisements are aired, audience reactions are tracked through attitude changes, crash patterns, and audience recall, relevance, message takeout and likeability. Fourthly, modelling the advertisements' performance enables them to be optimally targeted. The speed campaign is an example of the research process. Although excessive speed is a leading contributing factor to road crashes (34 percent of fatal crashes in 1996, 177 people killed and 2,800 injured), driver attitudes showed virtually no acknowledgment that excessive speed is dangerous, a belief that skill allows you to drive fast safely, and no perceived link between speed, reaction time and extent of injury. Advertising had to promote the fundamental speed and injury severity relationship by presenting facts to a primarily 15-59 year old male target audience. After two years, reductions of 14-26 percent in speed-related crashes can be attributed to the campaign, attitude shifts are small but positive, and the four TV speed advertisements show exceptionally high recall (77 percent), relevance (66 percent) and message takeout (70 percent) levels. (A)
Abstract