The New Zealand Transport Agency are reminding kiwis not be ‘eggs’ when it comes to vehicle safety checks. The ‘Right Car’ campaign asks kiwis to check the safety performance of their ‘car-tons’.

Eggs are a great metaphor for car safety.  Eggs are fragile and the job of the egg carton is to protect its contents much like a car. Also nobody wants to be called an egg in New Zealand – it means fool or dork.

Lets face it, car safety is also not the most thrilling subject so the NZ Transport Agency decided to create a campaign that people could fall in love with.

The campaign plays on the many yolky safety metaphors and the colloquial expression to explain safety ratings, airbag features and tips on buying safer cars via a series of quirky educational online videos and banner ads featuring a cast of cute, lovable characters that are…eggs.

And the clips are already proving popular, attracting about 850 hits a day in the first week. The New Zealand Transport Agency’s website has increased traffic by 71% and received many tweets.

Just by choosing a car with better safety features you can reduce your chances of being in a crash or improve your chances of surviving one.

Don’t be an egg.  Check safety first.

Click here to visit the website.

WWF Adopt a Polar Bear

Climate change. A big, HOT topical issue! Are the effects of climate change too big a problem for us to make a real difference? This clever campaign from WWF (World Wildlife Fund) UK doesn’t think so.

WWF’s agency Kitcatt Nohr, came up with an approach to empower their target audience.  Instead of bombarding people with typical end-is-nigh facts and apocalyptic statistics, that can leave an audience feeling powerless, depressed and hopeless, they reassured people that their donation could make a real difference.

How you ask?

An emotionally engaging campaign, putting endangered species like polar bears and tigers at the heart of the solution – is how!

Spearheading the campaign were a series of television commercials grabbing viewers attention through the use of beautiful, poignant imagery about the polar bear, telling people that they can make a real difference by simply adopting a polar bear for just £3 a month. In return, WWF would send adoptees a special adoption pack including an irresistible plush polar bear soft-toy and the ability to track your polar bear’s movements. The plush toy gave something tangible back to adoptees making the monthly donation feel worthwhile.

“We didn’t magnify the problem. We productised it.” (Source: Kitcatt Nohr)

The results speak for themselves. 56,000 animals were adopted within two years of launch, generating £2.58m first-year income.
Click here to visit the campaign website.

“We wanted a bold campaign to reach new audiences and force people to take notice. This is a massive issue, yet we rarely hear about it. We demonstrated how something that is just an embarrassment in the UK results in easily preventable deaths throughout the world. The ad’s mix of humour and real pathos achieved this cut-through.” Amy Faulkner, supporter recruitment team manager at WaterAid.

WaterAid (with help from their agency Kitcatt Nohr) created a remote controlled poo to chase pedestrians in London to remind them that billions cannot escape their waste.  I personally think the ‘poo on wheels’ was a pretty effective and ‘unique’ approach to grab people’s attention.

The campaign is also being supported by a television commercial, “Diarrhea”,  which shows British children singing the popular playground song “Diarrhea Diarrhea” at a primary school before cutting to shot of an African child revealing the serious life and death impact of bad sanitation.

The WaterAid team also planted 167 spades in Trafalgar Square to represent the amount of children that die per hour from diarrhea. Online display ads, inserts, email and a microsite, encourage people to sign petitions and donate to the cause.

So far the campaign has won a prestigious Thinkboxes award.  Stay tuned for the campaign’s results.

How does this particular ad encourage drivers to wear their seat belts? LOVE and FAMILY of course!

Surprised? Expecting something perhaps a little more …. Gory? Well, the approach to many Public Service Announcement ads include graphic shots of horrific accidents and distraught families breaking down after the loss of their loved one, but in this successful campaign by Sussex Safer Roads there is not even a car in sight!

The ad instead focuses on love and the family, showing a Father saved from an accident by the Mother and Daughter’s “seatbelt of embrace”. The PSA not only highlights the positive outcome of wearing a seatbelt but also one of the most important reasons to wear one, for the sake of the ones you love. We think this ad is especially successful in breaking through to the male audience, who generally are more concerned for the safety of their family than that of themselves.

Daniel Cox, Embrace Life‘s Writer/Director, further explained the concept of family in this campaign, “It was central to the development of the project that we root the concept of wearing a seat belt firmly in the family domain, and create the advert so that it could be viewed by anyone of any age. Children are so important as opinion formers within their family that we felt it imperative to have a child take a pivotal role in relaying our message.”

The elegantly shot simplicity and complete focus on the human element, make for a spine tingling ad, which you simply cannot take your eyes off.  We think it earns 5 stars!

If you ask Volkswagen, it’s all about fun.

According to The Fun Theory, ‘the easiest way to change behaviour for the better, is by making it fun to do’.

Launched in Sweden, this innovative approach engages with the community via a dedicated website www.thefuntheory.com. Here people can find creative and amusing ways to encourage recycling and exercise. A competition with a 2,500 euro purse calls for more fun ideas to help change behaviour for the better as well as inviting the community to judge the best entry.

Trying to change social behaviours is a complex and difficult task but Volkswagen has taken a different approach. Would you still use the elevator if you could make sweet music by using the stairs?

This question is exactly what Volkswagen set out to answer. Piano Stairs is an experiment where ‘piano keys’ were installed on each step in a busy subway station. When stepped on, each step played a different music note.  This one-off experiment was extremely successful with 66% more people choosing to use the stairs over the escalators so that they could make their own sweet music. The YouTube clip has also proven to be a success. It has achieved 9,183,065 views (noting that the video was added on October 7, 2009!!).

What a great campaign from Volkswagen and an interesting take on social behavioural change.

Tell us your thoughts on using fun to change behaviour.

What started out in 2002, has travelled across Australia, through Adelaide, Canberra, Tasmania, and is currently underway in Western Australia and across New South Wales for a six week period from September 15, 2009.

According to the campaign website: “Jesus. All about life is about presenting the words of Jesus in a culturally appropriate way, the media is the marketplace of the 21st Century…The media is the catalyst for interest, but each local church involved is the delivery point of the program.”

It’s a different approach for ‘the Church’. Even the campaign website acknowledges that connecting with the community via mainstream media is a new direction, saying that to date “…the church has not used the media well.”

Perhaps we are the target audience, but everywhere we go, we see this campaign.

It has an impressive dissemination strategy, including mainstream TV ads, Billboards, bus shelters, and has a banner on almost every church you can see – talk about utilising prime real estate in a cost effective way… so cost effective that local churches pay to disseminate the campaign materials! According to the campaign website, “For just $100 registration fee, payable on-line at www.jesusallaboutlife.com.au your local church can be a part of this campaign.”

The television advertisement is certainly easy for anyone to engage with – there’s hardly even a mention of religion.

The microsite is clever – appealing to Gen Y, encouraging user-generated content, and looks a bit like a myspace page.

The campaign has certainly attracted all different types of attention, including editorial discussion by key outlets like the Australian and on ABC Radio, blogs, endorsements from well-known people, and even critical review and parody websites.

Who sums it up best? In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail one of the campaign spokespeople said: ‘Christian or not, it’s a passionate topic. It’s a huge campaign in its own right and hard to ignore.”

We agree. Amen to good Social Marketing.

What does a pair of 12-foot long, bright yellow Y-fronts conjure for you?

Good answer!

Seriously;  although we don’t know what the impact has been to date, we give thumbs up for this “bold” campaign, devised by a Hospital in Southern China – the Changsha Bo Da Hospital in Changsha.

So, what was it all about?

Chlamydia? No.

Yellow underwear week? No.

The Annual Asia-Pacific Harry-High-Pants Festival?  We wish there was an event this cool…

No, China’s pressing Social issue addressed by this campaign, is in fact quite simple.  The stunt aims to encourage men to think about….. wait for it…. the effects of wearing pants that are too  tight.

According to campaign spokesperson, Xiang Xiong; “There are many urinary or reproductive problems caused by men’s underwear. This is intended to make men think.”

We like it.

It’s clever. It’s funny – and in line with what we think makes effective Social Marketing campaigns;

Easy - YES, nothing says ‘easy’ quite like a large pair of pants!

Emotionally Engaging – Making people laugh is one of the hardest, yet most enduring and genuine ways to connect with an audience.

Educational - Well… creating talkability and having the stunt literally attached to a hospital, not only informs the audience about the tie between underpants and health, but also provides a direct link to a place for further information, and if necessary, treatment!

Enduring - Weather permitting, it’s a clever stunt and an idea that really does stick in the mind!

So, anyone off to buy some new underwear?  Keen to hear what you think…..