Situation:

Kiwis love a long-weekend road trip. But unfortunately that means these long-weekends become some of the most dangerous times on New Zealand roads. We found that speed is still the biggest factor in vehicle deaths. It's clear traditional ‘slow down' messaging isn't working – as once a billboard goes by, it’s usually forgotten within seconds.

Brief/objective:

We needed to come up with an innovative way to talk to drivers during one of the deadliest weekends on New Zealand roads. Our objectives were to reach a hard-to-reach audience, get them to slow down, and in turn, contribute to a lower death toll.

Insight:

Throughout the ever-changing surroundings of a classic Kiwi road trip, one thing remains constant – music. We wanted to find a way to use the audio medium to deliver a message that stuck from point A to point B.

While speeders are often young males, that doesn’t usually reflect in high volume weekends. So we targeted anyone and everyone behind the wheel of their car during the long Easter Weekend.

Based on the need to get mass audiences, the NZ Police partnered with MediaWorks, New Zealand’s largest media network, to create SURVIVE THE DRIVE FM. A nationwide radio takeover, playing songs that help save lives.

- Targeting All People 18+ (Drivers in NZ)

- Targeted high crash areas with calls to listen through social.

- Targeting playlists by genre to entice specific audiences.

We also needed to reach those who didn’t use the radio, so Spotify playlists were curated to ensure we had something for everyone.

We had a partnership with NZ’s highest reaching national radio network (MediaWorks) that over indexes against AP18+. We took over five radio stations across the long Easter weekend, curating playlists that exclusively featured 60-80 BPM tracks. Thus, creating Survive The Drive FM.

All content was supported by prommercials, sweepers and Social posts (NZ Police has an audience of 3m+ across owned channels) to drive people to listen live on air. This ran throughout the lead up to the long weekend from Monday 11th April – Monday 18th April. Our five major stations, The Breeze, The Rock, More FM, Mai and Magic, played continuous safe-driving songs throughout the deadliest period on New Zealand roads.

However, to increase our scale we also created Survive the Drive Playlists on Spotify – again seeding these out through social. These could (and can still) be played anytime, anywhere through the NZ Police Spotify channel.

Over the long weekend, our selected music played in cars nationwide, targeting high-risk crash zones. 1.98M drivers tuned in, with NZ Police’s Spotify following surging +826%.

Objective: Cut car crashes by 10% vs Easter 2021

Achievement: Slashed crashes nationwide by 28.5%, with key impacts:

1. High-risk areas saw 75% reduction.

2. National speeding average dropped 6%.

Discounting other influences:

• Driven by other activity? No other changes in comms.

• Less cars on the road? Traffic has increased year-on-year.

ROI:

While we can't entirely claim success, correlating traffic cam/police data showed a 3.8km/h (6%) speed drop. While that doesn’t sound high, research indicates a 1% decrease in speed produces a 4% decrease in crash risk, meaning we saw a 24% reduction in crash risk.

Conservatively, 50% attributed to advertising, Survive the Drive potentially cut crash risk by 12%.

Our proven method to alter driving behaviour, now lives on Spotify indefinitely.