Think! team unveils priorities for 2004/5

At a road safety publicity liaison meeting on 27 February the DfT’s Think! team unveiled plans and priorities for the coming financial year. In this article we provide a brief summary of the key points to emerge from the meeting.

Jo Rushton (pictured), DfT’s head of road safety publicity, said that informal and formal feedback from road safety professionals suggests that while in the past the Think! publicity team has set out its publicity plans, more emphasis needs to be placed on explaining why and when road safety publicity will be taking place. To address this, the team will endeavour to explain more about the rationale behind campaigns, and try to give more notice of campaign timings by placing details on the calendar as soon as possible. The LARSOA website will also continue to be a major communications channel.

The five priority areas for television advertising in 2004/2005 are:-

Drink/Drive - a new TV advertisement is in production, ideally for launch around the time of Euro 2004. TV will feature during the summer months with radio employed across the winter (when TV is traditionally more expensive).

Speed - the campaign will comprise as much reminder advertising on TV and radio as the budget will allow throughout the year. A new TV commercial is planned for August/September, which will focus on the consequences of speeding.

Child/teen road safety - the teen target audience is 11-16 years with cinema advertising planned during the summer months. Hedgehogs advertising will run for the younger age groups on TV and in cinema, in particular around the time of school holidays.

Motorcycling – the campaign will target three groups - car drivers, all motorcyclists and a special focus on leisure riders. A new TV filler, ideal for RSOs to use at exhibitions etc, is under production. The Department’s TV campaign - aimed at both car drivers and motorcyclists - will comprise short bursts of advertising around specific high profile programmes including Mi2, Grand Prix coverage and selected films.

Seat Belts - TV and radio advertising throughout the year will act as a reminder, with an increase in the volume of advertising on radio and satellite TV stations for ethnic minorities.

Other priority areas for DfT in the coming year will include fatigue (in the form of a campaign involving third parties called ‘Driver Reviver’), mobile phones, drug/driving, work related road safety, and involving third parties in PR initiatives to support road safety messages.

LARSOA’s representatives for these meetings are Liz Barkwith and David Frost (who provided the notes for this article).

More information about Think! publicity plans for 2004/05 will be provided on the LARSOA and Think! websites and in the next edition of the Think! newsletter. In the meantime fuller details of the meeting can be found in the members’ section of this website, under DfT communications. The members’ section is password protected – members can obtain the password from LARSOA secretary Brian Hogarth, brian.hogarth@tiscali.co.uk.