Visual campaign raises millennials’ awareness of drunk driving

The statistics are clear: Millennials are most likely to be involved in drunk-driving fatalities, which account for nearly 40 percent of all driving-related deaths in Iowa. The Iowa Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau (GTSB) orchestrated a media campaign to heighten awareness of drunk driving around the alcohol-infused Fourth of July holiday. Its efforts have won it first place in the “Cause Advocacy” category of PR Daily’s 2017 Digital PR & Social Media Awards.

The GTSB’s agency, Integer Group, opted to expand the traditional outreach by developing a July 4th weekend campaign on Instagram and a Snapchat campaign targeting two events that attract a lot of millennials. The Instagram “journey” invited users to make choices (for instance, “grab some food,” or “take another shot”), ultimately conveying the consequences of those decisions. The message at the end of the journey: Finding a safe ride home is critical when you’re out for the night. 

The campaign is still accessible on Instagram, but it was most used during the holiday weekend, thanks to promotional content across multiple channels that drove millennials to the account. 

With Snapchat, Integer developed filters for the Des Moines-based 80/35 music festival and the Iowa State Fair to convey the impaired-driving message. 

Integer set key performance indicators for the social media efforts, with clear targets to measure success. Succeed they did, producing an impressive cost per thousand of only $8.67. Integer also measured new followers to the Instagram “journey” site, click-thrus to the official DriveSmartIowa.com site, impressions (nearly half a million) and thousands of uses of the Snapchat filters. The innovative work was one of the first such uses of Instagram and Snapchat by a government entity. 

Congratulations to Tyler Wentworth, Kaitlin Olson and Michael Rivera.