Meet Graham, the only person designed to survive on our roads. Part interactive sculpture, educational tool and ultimately a catalyst for conversation, 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.

Their 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.

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.

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 became the first to use Tango, Google’s augmented reality technology, to go beneath his skin and better understand his anatomy. Each physiological change was a new source of information to understand his physiology, the forces that come into play during a car crash and how they impact on our bodies.

To ensure maximum impact & reach, for those that couldn’t meet Graham in person we extended the exhibition experience into the online space, creating a site that perfectly replicated the real world experience and allowed anyone to explore Graham.

As Graham was adopted into school curriculums, the site also served as a portal for educators to obtain lesson ideas in subjects spanning science,

To date 287,282 people have visited Graham in the flesh, with an 86% increase in gallery visitation wherever Graham went. 1 in 6 people in regional areas saw the exhibition.

Beyond the exhibit, Graham sparked a global road safety conversation. With over 10 million website visits in 5 days, 89% campaign message recall and 1.2 Billion global impressions in the first week.

Graham has been adopted by the W.H.O. as the global face of road safety for 2017.

An indication of the cultural impact of Graham comes from Google; search for ‘Graham’ and the 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 school curriculums. To date over 2000 educational resources have been downloaded from the meetgraham.com.au website.

‘Meet Graham’ was a unique campaign with Promo and Activation at its heart. The Graham sculpture was the centre piece of it all with the touring exhibition reaching hundreds of thousands of Australians.

It was created with the aim of bringing our Transport Accident Commission’s brand ambition to life, of creating a completely new way of talking to consumers about road safety. Graham provoked a visceral reaction from all who met him, and generated interaction and meaningful consumer participation to promote safer behavior on our roads.

People understand that car crashes are traumatic, but as soon as you try to explain concepts like ‘kinetic energy’ or ‘impact force’ their eyes glaze over. So we went back to something every single road user could identify with; the human form. We just brought it to life in a truly non-traditional way with the aim of creating an exhibition that would completely reframe how we pictured road safety.

Throughout the process, decades of road safety data and medical research was interpreted and filtered by our key contributors Trauma Surgeon Christian Kenfield, Road Safety Engineer Dr David Logan and TAC’s own road safety researchers. This data helped identify the key weaknesses in the human body, which were then visualized by our artist, Patricia Piccinini.

We then invited people to Meet Graham in the flesh in a truly unique real world experience all across Australia.

In 2011 the UN declared global road death 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 frailties, 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.