An Integrated Approach to Consumer Education
Human error and poor choices lead to thousands of vehicle crashes on America’s roadways each year. Driver assistance technologies hold the potential to reduce this number and save lives, but many drivers don’t understand how they work. Together with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Stratacomm and its partners GMMB and Heart+Mind Strategies (Team Stratacomm) launched an integrated consumer education campaign grounded in research that highlights key technologies and how they can help save lives.
Market Research
To inform campaign assets and tactics, Team Stratacomm conducted a series of consumer research studies to better understand perceptions of vehicle safety technology and levels of automation, measure consumer comfort and evaluate the effectiveness of potential messaging and visuals for educational materials.
Influencer Engagement
In late 2020, Team Stratacomm worked with YouTube influencer Jason Fenske to create a series of short, snackable videos that highlight four technologies and how they can help save lives. To generate awareness of the safety benefits through these videos, the team strategically planned and launched a modest paid media campaign that hinged on peak car-buying seasons (e.g., Labor Day weekend sales) and used external voices, such as social influencers, to further reach.
Educational Materials
In addition to materials needed to support a larger media buy, Team Stratacomm also designed a new interactive infographic in English and Spanish to help clear the confusion surrounding automation and educate consumers on the different levels of automated driving.
Results
Team Stratacomm officially launched the full integrated campaign in March 2022 that included a seven-figure paid media buy inclusive of digital banner ads, social influencer activations, search ads, out of home video, audio and paid social. In addition to the paid media component, Team Stratacomm also conducted a series of outreach to key safety organizations to help amplify the campaign, including Edmunds and Cars.com, and supported NHTSA’s organic digital efforts like social media posting.
Within its first seven months, the campaign saw more than 120 million impressions and generated well over 11 million video views and 211,000 clicks to the NHTSA website.
Stratacomm’s use of these materials produced for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is for the purpose of providing examples of its work and does not constitute an endorsement by NHTSA.