Romania has the highest number of deaths caused by road accidents in Europe. Yet, in Romania, 6 out of 10 drivers don’t wear their seatbelts.

The only way to overcome the apathy related to seatbelt and authority PSA was to engage them into something they could feel part of, talk “to them” and not “at them”.

We decided to give the seatbelt a new dimension beyond safety. In a country where everybody ignores seatbelts, we stopped talking to everybody and focused directly on half of the target - the more receptive one, with potential to resonate greatly to looks and fashion: the women.

Introducing #seatbeltb00bing - the hashtag that encouraged women drivers to take selfies while wearing the seatbelt and upload them to social media, thus empowering them to amplify our message and turn seatbelts into a TREND and a cool thing to wear.

In Romania, 6 out of 10 Romanian drivers don’t wear their seatbelts. Typical road safety announcements are completely ignored by the young drivers. They even believe seatbelts send the wrong message about them, portraying lack of self-confidence.

The Romanian Automobile Club(ACR) wanted to change this and make seatbelts hard to ignore in a country where everybody ignores seatbelts.

We decided to give seatbelts a new dimension beyond safety. We focused only on half of the target -the women- and empowering them to amplify our message and turn seatbelts into a TREND and a cool thing to wear.

With zero media budget, the campaign became instantly viral and the first PSA to spread across borders, #seatbeltb00bing became The Number 1 cause-related hashtag in Romania and seatbelts became the trendiest and most talked about accessory to wear, nationwide..

(1) coverage worth of $492.000 free media

(2) PUBLIC AWARENESS: we reached 7,000,000 Romanians (around 68% of total Romanian internet population) benefiting from the valuable support of main TV stations, bloggers and online and offline press, that became pro-bono contributors to a great cause

The campaign generated 197.405.629 media impressions – making headlines in 15 countries on 4 continents (including on Euronews, CBS, Yahoo or GQ, amongst others)

(3) ENGAGEMENT: 900,000 conversations in Romania alone, on wearing seatbelts, from virtually 0 conversation on the topic

And most encouraging, effects are beginning to be noticed inside cars on the streets

Because authority PSA are ignored, we needed a different approach that would turn the call to action into will to engage and participate.

Introducing #seatbeltb00bing – the hashtag that encouraged women drivers to take selfies while wearing seatbelts and upload them to social media. Since we didn’t have any media budget, we planned the amplification in two phases:

1. Use #seatbeltb00bing to stir up conversations. We asked a few women drivers to use the hashtag, without revealing the campaign message. The action caught on immediately and more women drivers joined, including some celebrities.

2. Ask for commitment: selfies for a good cause. After the hashtag gained some momentum, we created a video featuring 3 local celebrities that had already joined the cause and posted selfies wearing seatbelts, and explained what seatbeltb00bing was all about, sending an invitation to women out there to take their selfies wearing seatbelts, using our hashtag.