One million vehicles travel across Tokyo’s Metropolitan Expressway every day. Over 12,000 accidents occur there each year, leading to chronic traffic jams. Our task was to change drivers’ consciousness and prevent accidents.Most safety campaigns stress law enforcement and penalties. We appealed to people’s social conscience. We delivered the message “It’s cool and smart to drive with good manners” as the core component of our campaign.Key fact: Preventing just 1 accident can eliminate a 2km traffic jam that will reduce CO2 emissions by 3 tonnes.Expressway accidents fell by 1,403 cases throughout the one-year campaign. 10,000 citizens wrote in supporting the project. Twenty major corporations, including Nissan and Sony, provided support.

Most traffic safety campaigns have focused on law enforcement and penalties. We took a different tact, appealing to citizens' sense of civic duty. Our message: "It's smart and cool to drive with good driving manners". Also, we supported facts focused on ecology. For example: "the prevention of one accident eliminates 2-km traffic jam, which cuts 3 tons of CO2 emissions". We challenged drivers to be socially conscious - a "Tokyo Smart Driver" - and distributed stickers to encourage participation. Radio stations broadcast our message. A press event was set-up in central Tokyo near the Imperial Palace to unveil the 'Praise Patrol' car to draw more media coverage. It attracted 50 mass media organizations, resulting in large coverage the following day on major TV news programs and in newspapers.

Publicity worth approx. 200 million yen.Additionally, with special permission from the police and authorities, 'Praise' signage was positioned around the expressway, with over 90 signs featuring our logo and citizen messages. Approximately 2 million people came into contact with the signage daily.

As news about the Praise Patrol Car spread, we could sense that our idea of getting citizens directly involved in the movement had captured the country’s imagination. Metropolitan Expressway accidents fell by 1,403 cases. Over 10,000 citizens wrote in supporting the project, and people showed their support by displaying campaign stickers and serving as volunteers to spread the word. The Praise Patrol Car was covered by several major Tokyo metropolitan area TV networks, including Nippon TV, TV Asahi, Fuji Television, TV Tokyo and Tokyo MX.Major newspapers, including the Asahi Newspaper, Yomiuri Newspaper, Sankei Newspaper, Houchi Newspaper, and others ran the story in the morning edition the day after the press conference and the story was covered in 15 magazines, mainly car magazines.The project also appeared on Yahoo top news, which brought heavy traffic to our campaign website.

Our campaign fee of 650,000 euros yielded publicity worth 5,200,000 euros.