Challenge: Kiwis are the friendliest people in the world. But once they get behind the wheel they’re altogether different. This attitude contributes to road fatalities. And despite us telling them about the dangers on the road, Kiwi drivers all seem to see someone else as the problem. We had to get them to think differently and see that their behaviours impacted others.

Insight: When people drive they feel safely cocooned in their cars, isolated from others - who are anonymous in their own metal contraptions. So we asked kiwis; if they got on the road and stopped thinking cars, and started thinking people - would it change the way they drive?

Execution: What’s the best way to get people to see their fellow commuters as people? Actually get them to see the faces of the people they drive with every day, not just the backs of their heads at 100k/hr. We started small and introduced the folk who commuted down Highbrook drive between 8 and 8:02am every morning to each other via a TVC. 100 people down. Now for the rest of the nation. So we went to the one medium they can all safely share in on the road - radio. We broadcast the same ad just once, at the same time, across all radio stations. The nation listened. Radio stations drove on-air discussion and sent listeners to their Facebook pages to talk about it more. On every major radio station in the country a custom Facebook tab app showed visitors the faces and key stats about the driving behaviours shared by them.

 

This drove them through to the Drive Social microsite. We connected to visitor’s Facebook so we knew their basic facts. Then we asked them a bit more about their daily commute. A clever mapping algorithm let us work out who they were likely to encounter based on their start, finish locations and times. Once we’d found the site users, we took them on a journey - comparing their interests, behaviours and selves to those they shared the road with every day. Showing them the actual faces of people they were likely on the road road. The radio host of their favourite station greeted them as a narrated animation showed them the faces and whimsical details of their. Every journey was personalised from thousands of possible variations. At the end of their journey, just like the folks of Highbrook drive, they were presented with their own snapshot of the people they commute with every day, with key facts to share on their social networks to encourage more kiwis to see people not cars. As more people visited the microsite these snapshots updated, the algorithm further narrowing in to show they’re most likely to be encountering on the road every day. And with user’s permission we took their faces and put them into geographically targeted banner adverts to bring more curious kiwis to the site.

Results: All up hundreds of thousands of kiwis saw the faces and facts about the people they shared the road with.