Meet Graham, the only person designed to survive on our roads. Part interactive sculpture, educational tool, Graham shows us how humans would need to change to survive a car crash. Over several months a trauma surgeon and a road safety engineer collaborated with a world-renowned artist using decades of road safety data, medical research and creativity to deliver evolution underpinned by evidence.

During the process key weaknesses in the human body were identified and modified, each change told a new story, showing what happens to our bodies in common crash scenarios.

The goal was to create a visceral experience with a simple, unavoidable message. If you don’t look like Graham then you need to slow down on our roads. To bring this to life, and reveal what lay beneath his skin, we needed to create a digital experience at scale as powerful as the experience of visiting Graham in person.

Australia first met Graham at a launch at the Victorian State Library, with the interactive exhibition then going on to tour regional areas where people are 4 times more likely to be involved in a crash.

Visitors used Tango, Google’s augmented reality technology (a first) to go beneath his skin and better understand his anatomy.

The exhibit however was only a small part of how we brought Graham to Australia. To ensure maximum impact & reach, all digital, social and PR drove those that couldn’t meet Graham in person to the meetgraham.com.au website that replicated the in-person experience, providing visitors with the interactive tools to explore him in 360 degrees to understand his physiology and the forces that come into play during a car crash. Each change in his body was a new source of information showing what happens to your body in a crash.

Within 24hrs he’d sparked a global road safety conversation. With over 10 million website visits in 5 days, 89% campaign message recall, 1.2 billion globlal impressions.

Our website, meetgraham.com.au was awarded FWA global website of the month by a 200 person industry panel.

In May 2017, Graham was invited to join the World Health Organisation as the international face of road safety to remind us of our vulnerability on the road.

An indication of Grahams cultural impact comes from Google. Search online for ‘Graham’ and the entire first page of web results, and first 15 images, are all of the ‘Meet Graham’ campaign, achieved organically through user action ($0 on SEO).

But the most important influence Graham has is on our future drivers, as he was integrated into the school curriculum and to date over 2000 educational resources have been downloaded from the meetgraham.com.au website.

Meet Graham, the only person designed to survive on our roads. Part interactive sculpture, educational tool, Graham shows us how humans would need to change to survive a car crash. Over several months a trauma surgeon and a road safety engineer collaborated with a world-renowned artist using decades of road safety data, medical research and creativity to deliver evolution underpinned by evidence.

During the process key weaknesses in the human body were identified and modified, each change told a new story, showing what happens to our bodies in common crash scenarios.

The goal was to create a visceral digital experience with a simple, unavoidable message. If you don’t look like Graham then you need to slow down on our roads. To bring this to life, and reveal what lay beneath his skin, we needed to create a digital experience that replicated that which people who visited Graham in person would have.

In 2011 the UN declared ‘global road deaths’ as a major public health problem and for this to be the Decade of Action. For over 25yrs the Transport Accident Commission in Australia have been successful pioneers of shock advertising campaigns that have helped drive that road toll down. But in recent times Australians have become desensitised to these tactics and the road toll is on the rise.

By our very nature, people tend to overlook or play down their own fralties, their own vulnerabilities, as this is far easier than facing their own mortality. Whilst this is a natural behavior, when it comes to road safety it is a dangerous one. The TAC needed to find a way to cut through to people fatigued of road safety messages and create a visceral experience that would once again get them to consider their own vulnerabilities and prioritise safe road behaviour.