Renaming Speed to Speedkills: Getting People to Slow Down

Posted Jan 14 in Work tagged , ,

Here’s a new approach to asking people to slow down on the roads that we have developed with the TAC and the people of Speed, Victoria. We are working with the TAC and the rural town of Speed to get the town of Speed to change its name to Speedkills.

It was only launched on Friday and we had the initial goal of getting 10,000 people ‘Liking’ the campaign on Facebook, to activate the name change. However, we’ve recevied 12,900 hits so far, and the stakes have increased. One of the towns best farmers ‘Phil Down’ will change his name to ‘Phil ‘Slow’ Down if we get to 20,000, and after that – well there’s another surprise in store. So help us get to 20,000.
Please spend some time on the site having a look at the town appeal movies – they are quite beautiful.
I’ll explain the psychological principles as to why this will be an effective campaign later. Any guesses for now?
POSTSCRIPT September 04 2011 Just a quick update. The campaign was shortlisted for 2 Effies at the Australian Communications Council Effectiveness Awards. It also appeared as a Case Study in Marketing Magazine. Here’s a link to a cut down version of the case study.


POST POSTSCRIPT September 29 2011  It also won a Gold Spike at the Asian Spikes  Nice one.
POST POSTSCRIPT May 2012 This campaign has also won a Silver and a Bronze at Clio for best use of social media, and best use something else?  It also won a prestigious ‘World Gold Medal’ at the New York estival in the Avandt Guarde category.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous

    Jan 16th, 2011

    great initiative. love the idea and the movie is great – although looks like you could do more with your settings.

  2. Ben

    Jan 18th, 2011

    AF i'm liking the campaign a lot. Psych wise I'm guessing a small action that reinforces a desired behavior. Next time you see a speeding kills sign you'll potentially be predisposed to the action you've been part of.

    I like the group action as well. usually speeding is the kind of thing you don't think you can affect as an individual but you've linked it to a an action that has an achievable community goal centred around those affected most by speeding.

    Interested to see where it all goes..well done all involved.

  3. Kim XXX

    Jan 18th, 2011

    Hi I Like this LIKE campaign a lot. I liked it on Facebook already. The psych reason it works is because you're getting people to commit to a future behaviour. If you commit to something like getting people to slow down you're more likely to follow through on that behaviour

  4. Fritz

    Jan 20th, 2011

    (admittedly not having read the post) any chance we could rename the town "why not take responsibility for your own actions instead of waiting for the government to guide you"-ville?

  5. Andrew

    Jan 20th, 2011

    You have previously highlighted the importance of conation for initiating behavioural change. With that in mind, I am curious about the campaign's central theme of reframing the words "speed" and "speed kills" as proper nouns.

    It seems to be one way to associate "speed" and "kills" yet avoid disconfirmation bias that I suspect exists within the target audience (eg. the "I can speed safely" attitude).

    Your explanation will be interesting.

  6. Zac Martin

    Feb 4th, 2011

    Personally I'd be more interested to see how you're measuring the effectiveness of this campaign.

  7. Fritz Bachen

    Feb 6th, 2011

    Zac, if you understand the results without understanding the principles it becomes a little academic because it's impossible to replicate (or not). We think the smart thing to understand is did it work o not – that's not the question. The right question is 'How did it work (or not). By understanding the principles you can build frameworks and start to have intelligent conversations about how it worked and what we can do again or not. Agree?

  8. A non-speeding driver

    Mar 21st, 2011

    Fritz – There are a number of hypothetical reasons why a campaign like this *could* work. However the question: "Did it have an effect on speeding?" is a valid one, even if it is difficult to answer. Otherwise we simply have to take on trust from you that it did work because it should work (according to a particular psychological theory). Which is a bit weak. In God we trust, all others must bring data.

    That said I hope it does work.

  9. Fritz Bachen

    Apr 2nd, 2011

    Hi A non-speeding driver I agree completely.

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