You are in: Road Safety News: 4 April 2008
THINK! - road safety marketing for 2008/9
 Fiona Seymour, THINK!'s head of publicity, guides us through the campaign strategy for 2008/9.
Introduction
The THINK! road safety campaign was launched in 2000 in response to the government's 10 year strategy, 'Tomorrow's world: safer for everybody'. It allows us to cover a wide range of topics and audiences under a single brand and has raised consciousness of road safety issues in the public's mind.
Background
For 2008/9, we have developed separate child and adult marketing strategies - although both will continue under the THINK! banner.
The reason for separation is that in the case of children and young people we are trying to influence the formation of habits, whereas with adults we are trying to persuade people, mainly drivers, to change sometimes entrenched habits.
Adult road safety
Over the last couple of years we have covered a number of different behaviours with relatively low media weight campaigns - the aim being, through the cumulative effect of these campaigns, to make the public generally more conscious of road safety.
 However, we believe that this strategy is no longer as effective - particularly since changes in the media landscape means that media consumption is now more fragmented than in the past, and it is more difficult to get coverage of individual issues.
We therefore plan to put much greater weight behind fewer topics in any given year, and aim to get good coverage of all important issues over a longer period.
Within this framework, we will ensure that the behaviours that contribute most to fatalities and serious injuries - speeding, drink driving and motorcycling - are given strong support in each year.
We will then put substantial weight behind another major issue in each financial year - without precluding lower level tactical activity on other topics where is it appropriate to do so.
The proposal is that, in 2008, the main featured topic will be seatbelt wearing - in 2009, drug driving and in 2010, fatigue.
In 2007 we reviewed the drink drive strategy and in July launched a new campaign. We are now working on new creative campaigns for seatbelt and speed to be launched in October 2008 and February 2009 respectively, and will also launch a new campaign for motorbikes in 2009.
Television will remain a major communications platform for THINK!. Despite many changes in the industry, it remains the most efficient means of reaching a mass audience.
However, we are increasingly using other channels, particularly the web, to extend the reach of our campaigns and encourage a more interactive relationship with our audiences.
We have worked closely with ACPO, particularly in relation to drink and drug driving, to ensure that we coordinate our campaigns - and will continue to do so.
The efficacy of this approach was demonstrated in the pre-Christmas education/enforcement campaign where there was a reduction of 20% in the number of drink drivers caught, despite a 6% increase in the number of drivers tested.
We also work with LARSOA, our executive agencies and other stakeholders as much as we are able within the confines of our resources.
 The marketing team also works on the Act On CO2 campaign and we will ensure that we consider opportunities to align road safety messages with climate change messages. This is particularly relevant in addressing employers who we hope to encourage to develop work related travel policies which should cover both agendas.
Child road safety
Traditionally, we have segmented the child audience into the under 11s and teenagers.
 The Hedgehogs campaign, for the younger cohort, was launched in 1997 and has proved a popular cultural icon - loved by parents, children and our partners in local government and the private sector.
However, research conducted in 2007 showed that as children are growing up more quickly, the campaign is no longer relevant to the older children in the target group.
We have therefore decided to review the campaign with a view to launching a new campaign aimed at teaching the young road use skills. It is our intention to be in a position to launch in September 2008, provided we have developed suitable material by then.
As part of preparing this campaign we will also be investigating the best way of segmenting the child audience in order to ensure that all groups of children are having their needs met.
We have some concern that those at the transition stage from primary to secondary school, which is a particularly vulnerable time in terms of road safety, might be falling between the younger children and teenagers.
 The teenage audience was served by the 'cameraphone' commercial in the last financial year and this year we had a partnership with MTV where groups of young people competed to write and film their own TV commercials on road safety.
For the coming year we feel that we can re-run 'cameraphone' as it was very well received by the audience. We will then develop a new approach for this audience in 2009.
Alongside traditional advertising, we are planning a complete review of all the educational material that the department and our agencies produce for intermediaries, especially teachers, who work with children. This is because material has been developed over the years to meet specific needs and much of it is now dated.
We are in the process of engaging a marketing company who specialises in the education field to develop a strategic framework for road safety education for children and young people - to cover everything from the time they first start using the roads to becoming drivers. The outcome will be a comprehensive set of educational materials for all age groups.
They will also develop a distribution strategy to ensure that we are optimising opportunities for these materials to be used.
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