A piece in the Economist discusses the British “penchant for horror’ road safety ads, and questions whether this approach works.
Using the headline ‘Don’t stop, don’t look, don’t listen’, the Economist piece reads as follows:
“British road-safety adverts are more shocking than those broadcast in America, says Anne McCartt of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent research group there.
“The British penchant for horror might reflect the nation’s long tradition of public-service broadcasting, which seeks to entertain and inform at once. But do the ads work?
“Though gory, shocking public-information films linger in people’s heads, they seem not to alter behaviour much. If the consequences seem too extreme, the threat may seem too far-fetched, says Josh Bullmore, who has both made and studied such adverts. Few may believe that disaster could befall them or adjust their behaviour accordingly.
“Tessa Langley of the University of Nottingham has compared the impact of smoking campaigns that showed tumours erupting disgustingly out of cigarettes with more positive ones that also urged people to quit. The former proved more memorable, but the latter led more people to ring the national smoking helpline.
"The budget for public-information films is shrinking. The Central Office of Information, the government’s marketing department, was closed in 2011. In 2008-09 the DfT spent almost £3m on its drink-drive advertising campaign. In 2013-14 spending fell to less than £1m.
“Unable to afford as many spots on television, the scaremongers hope their films will be shared on social media. And that is encouraging them to churn out the gory kind.
“In a recent advert from the DfT, men washing their hands in a pub toilet are startled by the face of a mannequin smashing bloodily through the mirror. The ad suggests a hashtag, #publooshocker, for online sharing.
“Less shocking adverts might work better, but fewer people would see them.”
My understanding of road safety advertisements is that the primary goal is to reduce casualties. Thus the advertisement should focus on specific “problems” whether it is speed, drink driving, texting and of course the road user – old, young, male, female, car driver, motorcyclist, pedestrian etc.
The people responsible for road safety education in Northern Ireland appear to be convinced that advertisements that are so gory they make a person change channel, is a good thing. Here, there are even rolling shows for schools where the police turn up with coffins to “educate” young people on the dangers of speed.
It seems to me that this type of advertisement is not necessarily “The British penchant for horror might reflect the nation’s long tradition of public-service (..)”, but perhaps a desire to hold a modern version of public executions as a form of retributive justice.
In Northern Ireland I suspect there is also evangelistic fervour added to the creative inspirations, considering that road safety advertisements here focus on shame and guilt.
The overwhelming majority of road users are sensible, so it shouldn’t mean that they have to be subjected night after night to blood and guts because of a minority of those who are irresponsible.
The comment from Tessa Langley of the University of Nottingham who “has compared the impact of smoking campaigns that showed tumours erupting disgustingly out of cigarettes with more positive ones that also urged people to quit. The former proved more memorable, but the latter led more people to ring the national smoking helpline”, is in my opinion, the most relevant, because that’s what counts in the end.
Perhaps the comment regarding third world poverty “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he will feed himself for a lifetime”, could be interpreted in terms of road safety advertisements.
There was a really good advertisement a few years ago from the DfT (I think) regarding drink driving – with the barman asking the punter if he wanted another drink – but it spelt out the consequences of being over the limit – no licence, no insurance – no job.
Elaine Northern Ireland
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As ever this is an interesting discussion that I’m sure helps us all challenge our own thoughts and approaches. I also do not believe UK ads have been overly gory, compared to those I have seen from other countries.
In Kent we recognised a long time ago that we couldn’t compete with the film industry in terms of ‘reality gore’ and nor would we wish to.
We have tended to use the approach that we’ll take you so far, but the imagination of the viewer will generally fill the gaps; i.e. the smashed up car doesn’t have to show the smashed up driver as the viewer can ask themselves ‘so what was the victim like?’.
That said, to seed the viewer’s imagination we always link our messages to real life experience and ask those who have survived or dealt with road crashes to relay how it has affected their life, then and now, as well as providing a call to action; the impact on people.
In terms of measuring the outcomes from our work, clearly casualties are the bottom line. However, we, like many, do not specifically assign casualty reduction targets to individual ETP activity; although we do have long term targets for casualty data as maintaining the overall casualty reduction focus is critical to our purpose, as well as helping to focus our partners. Instead we seek to measure our ability to raise awareness, increase knowledge and affect intended behaviour.
None of these are a guarantee of reduced casualties, but they do provide indications of a better informed road user group, able to make appropriate choices in line with our core messages. Indeed, to infer the success of an ETP intervention based on pure casualty numbers runs the risk of the ill-informed violator injuring a well-informed error maker – is that truly a failure of ETP?
Steve Horton; Kent
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Having researched shock advertising I’d like to add that yes, shock advertising can work. It can get people talking (often the main aim) however, it often needs to be justified… and not prolonged as the shock wears off.
On another note, in terms of road safety I have recently researched road safety education with young people and concluded that the ‘real life’ elements have a great effect on attitude change.
Rhiannon, Lancashire
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It is interesting to read the comments regarding gory adverts, but I think that the point is being missed to a large extent. If gory adverts work (and I am not 100% convinced of their efficacy) then unless those who view them are given some techniques that will enable them to better manage their risk, they go away thinking that there is nothing they can do about things and therefore carry on in the same manner as before.
We have always worked on giving potential solutions to those with whom we work, rather than merely showing blood and guts video clips. People do need to know the possible consequences of their actions, but shock & awe adverts are not the only means of informing them.
David, Suffolk
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A good way to evaluate is to use psychological profiling to identify patterns of driving risk then to expose the subject to a range of appropriate propaganda materials – reinterview for impact and then interview again a week/month later to record changes in attitudes and driving behaviour. We are trailing this with women drivers with potential risk for drunk driving. One thing is clear there is no one message or medium for all – something made clear by the current BBC Horizon programme for losing weight.
Kris Beuret, London and Leicester
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The problem with ads showing simulated accidents and injuries – no matter how ‘gory’ – is that the audience knows they are simulated and they can never be as chilling, shocking and sobering as witnessing the real thing. Showing footage of real-life accidents and the effect on those involved to an audience of sceptics is more likely to leave its mark.
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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From what I understand, it is critical for a campaign to make an emotional connection as well as rational. Fear (of crashing or getting caught) is a legitimate and potentially powerful emotion to target. However as stated in the article the consequences have to feel realistic. If they aren’t then viewers will opt out.
Sometimes less is more – I saw some research previously which showed that viewers had a stronger emotional reaction to a domestic violence ad than to the same ad but with added blood. But personally I don’t feel British road safety ads have ever been that gory or shocking, certainly not compared to some other countries.
Of course ads don’t have to use fear – drink drive ads for example have generated disgust (at others selfish behaviour in order to make it socially unacceptable). And they don’t even have to feature a crash, for young men especially it may be better to focus on social identity, undermine the risk image and/or highlight positive norms. We need to ensure we aren’t defaulting to the obvious option but developing campaigns that combine best practice evidence of what its likely to work with audience insight and creative engagement.
The publooshocker ad referenced above was only ever designed as a PR tactic to complement the wider campaign. It was produced at very low cost, generated significant PR coverage and achieved over 10m views in total. Of course those are just outputs, and don’t mean much on their own, but we also regularly measure attitudes and self reported behaviour.
I agree with Matt and Duncan, its worth measuring outputs and outtakes but we do have to do better in evaluating end outcomes. We’ve managed to show that drink drive campaigns have reduced casualties using econometrics see – https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/372128/Drink_Drive_IPA_Paper_2012.pdf – and now we need to do better evaluating the effectiveness of other campaigns.
At least we have the RSGB websites where we can share evaluation and learnings.
Tim Lennon, Department for Transport
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You’re right Matt these measures do effect the brand and how it’s perceived, but brand awareness does not pay the bills! There are challenges in connecting the two for sure, but at least the manufacturing and retail industries know when a sales strategy works or not because they see it on the bottom line.
My concern is that there is a huge disconnect between the activities of the road safety industry and the results on the ground. The default mindset seems to be that proving whether an intervention has reduced the number of people killed and injured is virtually impossible, but that’s simply not true. It may be difficult to make the connection, but has been amply demonstrated in other industries it certainly isn’t impossible. The challenge for this industry then is to make the connection between interventions and the bottom line so that we can do more of the interventions that actually work and discard the ones that don’t.
Duncan MacKillop. No surprise – No accident.
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Duncan:
The companies you mention will also care about their brand – in particular its image and market placement. These ‘soft measures’ help make the sales and the companies have similar challenges in proving the direct link between the two.
Matt Staton, Cambridgeshire
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Duncan:
If it were up to you, what would you be saying to road users to protect them from themselves and from others and how would you get the message across?
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Marks & Spencer et al couldn’t care a less about their Facebook likes all they are concerned about is how many cars, drinks or jumpers they have sold. Not many chief executives keep their jobs if the have grown the number of Facebook likes, but overseen a drop in sales.
Just like the executives of the aforementioned companies who are measured by their sales success, the sole job of the people that work in this industry is preventing people from dying in road accidents and we should be measured by that metric and nothing else.
Duncan MacKillop. No surprise – No accident.
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Richard raises a useful and interesting question: “Did any of these prevent us from being involved in a collision though?” It would be very enlightening for readers to say what, if anything, has influenced their (hopefully acident-free) road behaviour. Was it outside influences, or their own learning curve and self-development? Was the desire to behave carefully and responsibily always there or did it need correction along the way? Are there some reformed boy/girl racers amongst us? An interesting topic and oe which could help shape E,T & P.
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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I don’t think the adverts used are very shocking at all, certainly not compared to those used elsewhere in Europe. As has been mentioned already an education mix of shocking, inspiring and motivating messages are the key to success.
Proving whether any individual educational intervention has reduced the number of people killed and injured on the road is virtually impossible – how could you design an evaluation that measured this? Effective evaluation of education schemes requires you to assess changes in attitudes and intentions, possibly together with self-reported behaviour. Recall is important and I bet most of us can remember road safety messages from our youth (depending on your age of course). Did any of these prevent us from being involved in a collision though? Evaluation is possible if you ask the right questions – and knew what you were planning to achieve in the first place.
The days of blanket TV advertising are behind us now and using more social channels is just the way things are done these days. If Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Marks & Spencer et al care about the number of ‘likes’ to measure their brand engagement then it seems a sensible metric for us to use as well.
Richard Owen, Banbury
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Shock value adverts are not wrong but need to be used in the right context. They have their place in any campaign trying to get people to think about their behaviour along with other softer messages.
The stop smoking campaign purposely uses the hard hitting advert to get your attention, followed by the softer more positive one to get you to ring the help line. It’s called social marketing.
Road safety can learn a lot from social marketing techniques which “is an approach used to develop activities aimed at changing or maintaining people’s behaviour for the benefit of individuals and society as a whole.” The National Social Marketing Centre definition.
This is different to promotional marketing which is about promoting, advertising and selling products and services. It is also different to “social media”, which is a communication and engagement channel and can be used in road safety campaigns, along with press, print and radio etc.
As for measuring campaign impacts, visit the excellent RoSPA E-Valu-It toolkit. This helps you understand what you can measure and Facebook “like” have their place. It also helps you think about what data sources you’re using to develop the campaign.
There is a lot of excellent advice out there to help people develop campaigns.
Road safety campaigns are a lot more than just “publicity” …
Ruth Gore, Safer Roads Humber
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Experience tells us that we can’t compete with video games and Saw movies when it comes to gore, our younger audiences do respond to powerful emotional impact. It’s interesting that the people who tell me I should be using the blood and guts approach are usually retirement age. Is that because that’s what they remember or they aren’t aware of the media younger people are engaging with? Or both?
Iain Temperton, Norfolk
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I absolutely agree with Matt that there should be clear and measurable objectives to any road safety intervention. I think however that the prime measurable objective should be a reduction in the number of collisions and not the number of Facebook ‘likes’ a campaign receives.
Duncan MacKillop. No surprise – No accident
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Shows why it is important each campaign has clear and measurable objectives and is evaluated accordingly.
Matt Staton, Cambridgeshire
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