To see what campaigns are already out there, awaring people of mobile phone usage when driving, I analysed some existing examples.
Think! is the Department of Transport's dedicated road safety website, with guidance and information for all road-users. After researching into awareness posters it became clear that Think! has put the most into mobile phone use campaigns. Some of the posters and billboards made can be seen below.
Their campaigns tend to take two approaches. On one side, their campaigns use visual puns and clever design to grab people's attention. Two examples of this can be seen by the top two posters, where they have visually portrayed the message of how difficult it is to concentrate on two things at the same time. The second side of their campaigns are much more chilling and emotional, playing on guilt to make people consider the consequences of their actions when using their phones when driving. This is essentially done by using sad, disturbing imagery that really grabs people's attention. This can be highlighted by the banner and YouTube campaign. Both approaches are very serious and direct with their messages.
Another example of how visual puns have been used in advertising can be seen by Touch & Yasa's campaign against texting and driving. A poster that visually links mobile phone use to car crashes can be seen below.
I was only able to find one Police poster online, which can be seen below. This is much less about the use of imagery and more about using hard facts and figures. Once again, a serious tone has been used to highlight the importance of the issue. This poster seems much less thought-provoking than the other posters, however. This may be because the colours and imagery used are brighter and less chilling than those in the Think! ads. Whilst this may not be as attention grabbing, this poster actually aware people of the consequences of being caught using mobile phones when driving - an aspect that the other posters do not focus on. It is surprising that Think! have not used statistics in their ads; it could be interesting to combine Think!'s overall campaign aesthetic with hard-driven facts.
As the examples found above are still campaigns, I looked further into existing video campaigns also. Similar to the still campaigns, these videos are emotional and show the issue panning out. Whilst they show car crashes taking place in the videos, it is hard to judge whether they are effectively awaring people about the issue, as neither include information, such as stats and figures, on phone usage behind the wheel, and what the law is. This is one aspect that could be explored further.
After analysing various campaigns it is evident that they all follow a similar theme. Very serious tones of voice are used to try and push the importance of the issue. All the campaigns found revolve around using imagery of crashes and mobile phones. They also either try to make the viewer feel guilty, or emotional, in an attempt to push the message as effectively as possible.
There seems to be a lack of statistical campaigns. This may be because car crashes due to mobile phone use are hard to measure; however, there are some statistics on the matter that could be used to aware people of the dangers. The distribution of still campaigns seem slightly ineffective; the majority are printed posters and billboards that would be on display by the sides of roads and other vehicle areas. Whilst this is one way of trying to grab the attention of drivers, it seems counter-productive, as it would be more effective to distribute the content to people's phones. This way, people that use their mobile phones regularly would be aware of the problem before getting in their vehicles. Posters could be distributed on phones, so that people are made aware of the issue through social media sites. The video campaigns found are distributed online; however, they are too long to grab people's attention (it was found in a previous project that 44% of 30- to 60-second video ads on Facebook were viewed to completion). In this sense, social media campaigns could be re-imagined, so that they are concise and immediately attention-grabbing.
Whilst such awareness campaigns exist, it is evident that they are not physically stopping offenders from using their phones. They may change some people's perceptions on the matter; however, they do not physically limit drivers from using their phones. In this respect, it is hard to judge the effectiveness of such campaigns. A feature needs to be put in place that stops drivers from using their phones when driving. This is one idea that I will later explore.
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