200 accidents happen in Brussels every year, due to cycling with headphones on. That’s because listening to music while on your bike increases the likelihood of an accident with 38%. But how do you change behaviour when your target audience is actually having a lot of fun doing it? Bike for Brussels wanted to motivate bikers to make sure they cycle without headphones on, without taking away the fun of riding with music. Our objectives were ambitious. First, sensitize bikers in Brussels to never bike with headphones on. Second, create talk value: Bike for Brussels doesn’t want to push information but wants to open the discussion about the importance of cycling safely.

To convince cyclists to leave their headphones at home we needed to come up with an idea that keeps the fun in riding with music but without headphones. We hacked cyclists’ brains by launching a new earworm every day in collaboration with Brussels radio station Bruzz. This new radio format was aired every day and evening before cycling rush hour and allowed us to install 10 songs that were carefully chosen by music directors making sure that they would stick in the head of our cyclists. Using our own real-time (cycling traffic) data combined with Strava’s live recording data, we identified the busiest and most dangerous cycling routes in Brussels. Posters were placed on these strategic points to remind cyclists of the dangers even during their trip. And for those who pay more attention to their phone than to traffic, targeted ads were shown during the day on social media.

Cycling with music through headphones is dangerous, but research showed that for most people the benefits of riding with music outweighed the danger. We had two target audiences. The first one were young cyclists in Brussels, as they are more likely to ride with headphones on. We reached them through our collaboration with local Brussels radio station Bruzz, which is very popular with people between 20-35. The second one were all the other road users, which is a very broad target audience. They were reached by seeding our idea to national media. By creating a new radio show on Bruzz: “The Earworm of the Day”, we put catchy songs in cyclists’ heads. By using radio in this unexpected way, other media picked up on our campaign, and spread awareness about cycling without headphones to almost the entire population.

Since our target audience is a broad audience, but also a very local one, we wanted to go broad with a radio, PR and OOH approach and target more specifically using online media. Instead of using traditional radio slots, we decided to collaborate with Bruzz, the biggest local radio station in Brussels. This allowed us to embed our campaign right in the middle of their content. We launched the campaign in the morning, when bikers were ready to leave their home and start biking to school or work. So when people jumped on their bikes, we reminded them to leave their headphones at home. Afterwards, we launched it again in the evening when they went back home. By doing this, we communicated at a relevant moment.

By hacking cyclists’ brain we’ve managed to not only sensitize cyclists, but to immediately present them with the solution: an earworm! Working with a partner as Bruzz and creating our own show during peak moments we’ve reached more people than we could hope for. This way we’ve planted an earworm in the head of 60.000 unique listeners for 10 days. The campaign also created a huge talk value about the importance of riding without headphones: the topic was picked up by national tv, radio and newspapers, earning us € 194.120 in free media, and making sure we reached 8.232.145 people. So, while the experience was designed to sensitize cyclists in Brussels, it interacted with almost every Belgian. It’s impossible to determine a long-term impact on Brussels’ cyclists’ behavior yet. But the drop in cycling accidents during the campaign of 3% makes us hopeful for the future.