Situation

Tiredness at the wheel causes 1 of 5 car accidents. During the so-called micro-sleeps you drive “totally in the dark” for a few seconds, completely losing control of the car.

Brief

How to discourage people from driving while being tired, reminding them how dangerous it can be?

Objectives

The aim of our project is to convey the idea that it is crucial to be always steady and awake when driving, with a social friendly language and perfectly targeted to the viewers.

For World Sleep Day, held on March 15th, we realized a social video awareness campaign about the concept of being tired at the wheel. We posted six 15” bizarre sponsored videos: right at the best moment the screen goes completely dark, leaving the viewers figuring out themselves how the action ends up. The message: “Just a few seconds are enough to lose everything. If you’re tired, don’t drive.” The whole campaign was accompanied with the two hashtags: #DontSleepAndDrive and #WorldSleepDay. The video’s topics varied from sport, animals, classic viral to meme videos in order to reach different targets according to their preferences.

As a first step we drew out our main target: young people (20 to 40 years old), the group of people most involved in car accidents by tiredness. We needed to communicate them our message in the most effective way. We found out that social videos were the most powerful means to do so, because of their targeting potential. On the internet there are 4 main social trends for social videos: animals, football, sports and meme/personal. We produced our creative videos using six subjects related to these trends and decided to share them during World Sleep Day (March 15th). Every video has been targeted to its subject of interest so as to hit every single user with the video more relevant for them.

After the targeting/trending analysis, we found out the 4 main video trends and areas of interest: animals, sport, football, meme/personal. Thus, we selected the six subjects that best suited our analysis and made the videos. The videos had to be a surprise for every single user, so we specifically targeted them in such a way to bring them up in their Facebook/Instagram/Twitter feeds in the middle of their favorite contents. We shared them in different hours throughout the day, specifically selected to have the best impression ratings. After the publication of every video, we replied to every comment so as to explain in depth what Ford was doing to prevent car accidents due to sleeping and other causes.

The videos have been shared during World Sleep Day, on March the 15th. After the posting, the campaign was immediately covered by lots of media publications: from Sky to Repubblica to Cosmopolitan news. In only 24 hours we reached over 9 million views with a reach of 4.3 million people. We received lots of positive feedbacks on social media where the films were posted, praising the brand for the initiative. People replied and reacted to the video sharing their stories and the sensations felt from the videos: our main objective was achieved.