Campaign Background & Summary
Safety and saving lives are one of Volvo’s core objectives. The brand is dedicated to improving the safety of not only the car and those who drive it, but of all road users, we share the public space with.
Our mission was to strengthen Volvo’s safety leadership through an awareness campaign that would not only be seen by many but would also have the potential to become a conversation starter that could spark the societal debate and change our perception of road safety.
Dropping off your kids and getting to work on time puts extra pressure on parents on the first day of school. It makes parents suffer from stress, the number one factor leading to traffic accidents (source: VIAS). So, Volvo invited companies to allow their employees to be late for work on the first day of school. In this campaign, called “Be Safe, Be Late”, the children themselves were the ones to convince everyone to slow down on the first day of school, turning the most stressful day of the year into the safest day of the year.
Description
Volvo has a history in safety and a strong reputation to defend. They are pioneers in making cars safe. They were the first brand to share their knowledge concerning safety with other car brands and they were also the first to broaden their view on safety and include all road users. However, safety is becoming more and more a commodity claimed by other car brands that introduce similar safety innovations. If Volvo wants to stay ahead in the game they have owned for decades, we need to create a societal and cultural dimension to safety.
That’s why we choose to build our campaign around the first day of a school year. For people with children, this is a moment when they are personally confronted with road safety: their child is setting off for school in an environment that’s getting much more crowded with different road users all sharing the same space.
Fourteen children get injured every day commuting to school. Volvo is a firm believer that number should be reduced to zero. That’s why Volvo not only massively invests in technological features that ensure the driver’s safety but also thinks outside of the box, or car in this case.
Objectives
So, for this campaign, Volvo went beyond targeting its own Volvo drivers and made it a nationwide campaign targeting all Belgians who were conditioned to drop off their children in time on the first day of school. With "Be Safe Be Late," Volvo aims to make the first day of school the safest day of the year.
Strategy
Step 1: To find the insight that resonates we needed to map out all the friction points that could lead to accidents to and from school. First, we made in-house a list by reflecting on our own behavior and based on our intern research we found out that stress could be a crucial element but at first hand it is an element that is often overlooked when it comes to ‘reasons why’ when causing dangerous behavior on the road.
Step 2: As a second step we collaborated with VIAS (Belgian institute for road safety) for additional research around the impact of stress on driving behavior. It was important to find out if there was a correlation between the first day of school and stress levels.
Step 3: Thirdly Volvo Cars commissioned an online survey conducted between July 28 and August 4 among 1,000 Belgian employees with resident school-age children and among 250 employees and HR managers, representative on language, age, and degree. The study showed that 25% of employees with school-age children say they fear being late for work on the first day of school. This is especially true if the children are in kindergarten. 49% of respondents say they drive less attentively or less carefully when they are in a hurry.
Step 4: The insight: Throughout the 3 previous steps as groundbreaking information for this insight and strategy we saw a common thread, something that was not tangible but could be crucial: if we can eliminate driver stress, we can make the roads safer for everyone.
Creative Strategy
We’ve found a blind spot that has been overlooked but is responsible for 50% of all road accidents in Belgium: stress. If we can eliminate driver stress, we can make the roads safer for everyone. This brings us to the simple yet effective solution to ‘how can Volvo eliminate stress?’: Be Safe Be Late, asking employers to spread and imprint this message to their employees.
We launched the campaign 4 weeks before the first day of school. Presenting our research findings to the press in which the CEO of Volvo Belgium announced the campaign along with a statement that both Volvo dealerships and the Volvo factory in Ghent would start later during the first day of school, calling all Belgium companies to follow this example.
The announcement was promoted through a paid social campaign, followed by campaign material targeted to both employers and employees. Companies were directly contacted through personalized direct mailings. POS material at dealerships and partnerships with parent influencers made sure our campaign was heard by everyone.
To maximize the momentum during the first day of school, radio commercials were broadcasted during the morning, and OOH’s were installed on the most important traffic junctions in Belgium. On top of that, we achieved editorial coverage on all radio morning shows nationwide on September 1st.
f. Results
To go back to the beginning, our goal was to make the first day of school the safest day of the year by eliminating driver stress. We can share that over 30.000 people went stress-free to work on the first day of school.
In total, more than 200 companies participated in this campaign, sending the ‘be safe be a late’ message to more than 30.000 employees through a personalized toolkit which made it able to run this campaign in their own company.
In addition to our paid media campaign - which ran on all social channels - our message was also supported by relevant influencers who have children. Those influencers actively promoted Volvo’s initiative with their own channels. The targeted campaigning and PR via influencers and press made it possible to reach 1,7 million Belgian parents with this important message ‘be safe be late’.
But reaching our audience wasn’t enough. By sending out traffic experts and Volvo spokespersons, we also caught the attention of the press and were present on all radio morning shows nationwide. Putting the campaign right at the heart of popular culture and generating a nationwide discussion of how our work-life balance affects road safety.