O2 Slovakia asked us to create a campaign that will help them to adopt the topic of distracted driving, mostly by using smartphones. This topic was never widely discussed in Slovak media or attributed to any commercial brand, but it was already the number one reason of car accidents.

We found out that 20% of accidents in Slovakia were caused by the most unskilled drivers, aged 18-25. We also knew that to address this audience, a simple push-style campaign would not get their attention. That is why we chose the way to firstly open the discussion between the youngsters about the topic of distracted driving and only after that to connect it with the brand.

And one more thing – the client did not want to scare people with any kind of aggressive shots of accidents, injuries or anything similar. We had to come up with positive motivation.

We built the creative idea around the concept of "Road pirate". The definition of a road pirate in Slovakia is someone who breaks laws and speed limits while driving. But with the rise of technology and mobile devices, new road pirates have emerged – distracted drivers.

To support the campaign we also created and designed a unification symbol of the campaign. The pirate eyepatch carried the symbols and colors of popular social networks, so it showed the risks of social media and its ability to drain attention while driving.

The creative idea of the PR campaign was strongly built on powerful teasing and opening of the topic. We used the staged conflict between police, key ambassadors and more influencers to spread it out organically.

The PR strategy was built on 3 main pillars:

Right influencers.

Our target group (young drivers, aged 18-25) follows influencers 24/7. They trust them. Also, tabloids watch the influencers closely, too. Thus we chose influential persons with huge followership in both social and traditional media.

Powerful Story.

People learn from their own mistakes and laugh at the mistakes of others. We based our creativity on these insights. We played out a crime story with our influencers. There was the good, the ugly and the happy ending.

Useful Solution

The mission of the campaign was not only to create buzz, but also to contribute to a real change in drivers’ behavior. We’ve introduced a custom-built navigation app that rewards users for not touching their phones while driving.

We took a well known influencer "Sajfa", who regularly used a smartphone behind the wheel and posted Instagram stories while driving. Together with the Police, we staged an incident, where the Police stopped him and gave him a ticket. The whole incident was streamed live, looked like a real story and quickly gained spontaneous attention from the public and media.

For the upcoming days, we planned and scripted conflict between the influencers. 19 of them joined to confront Sajfa, support him or took a stand against distracted driving. This created even more media attention and the topic started to spread off.

To come up with a resolution, we created an app to reward all responsible drivers who did not touch their phones while driving with free data. After the revelation, we cooperated with several media in the country to help connect the topic with the brand.

During the teasing and after the revelation of the campaign, we obtained an organic reach of more than 12 million (in a 5 million country). But more importantly, we achieved even more interesting marketing results.

During the teasing phase, 45 articles were organically published, generating a reach of 7.8 million. After the revelation of the campaign, another 90 articles were published (with a reach of 11.8 million), of which 46 were organic (reach 4.6 million).

We carried out private research before and after the campaign, provided by Kantar Slovakia. Both were executed on a representative sample of 1000 people from Slovakia.

Awareness

60% of young drivers noticed the campaign, of which 97% rated the campaign positively. In addition, 68% of them felt that the campaign positively influenced their driving behavior.

Impact

48% of young drivers aware of the campaign declared that the campaign influenced their use of the phone behind the wheel. Year-on-year, the behavior of young drivers improved, handling the mobile phone behind the wheel less (49% to 42%).

The users touch their phone less than before: the figures dropped from 0.7 touches per ride before the campaign down to 0.3 touches. Drivers are thus more responsible thanks to the campaign and the app.

O2 became the number 1 brand associated with road safety together with the Police among the target group (16%).