Road trauma is the biggest killer of those aged between 0 and 14.

As part of their regular Road Safety Calendar, the Australian Road Safety Foundation briefed us to develop a campaign to remind people to slow down to 40km/h around School Zones as kids returned to the classroom in 2021.

Despite flashing signage, highly visible road markings and pedestrian crossing Stop and Go volunteers, many drivers still speed through School Zones. In fact, recent research from national insurance company AAMI showed that nearly 50% of drivers admitted to speeding through School Zones.

Our objectives were:

- To make the fact that School Zones were back in operation top-of-mind for all drivers.

- Encourage a change in long-term behaviour regarding slowing down around School Zones

- Ensure there were no incidents or accidents in School Zones during our campaign period.

We created a suite of 10 cut-through audio messages, that thanks to the magic of Spotify's mobile app geo-targeting, were only activated once drivers were within 5km of a School Zone location.

We called them Slow Down Songs.

Each song would start at normal speed before dramatically slowing down allowing a message to be delivered as VO: “This Slow Down Song is to let you know that you are now near a School Zone, and will need to slow down to 40 when you enter it." The song would then return to normal speed before resuming the listener's playlist.

We were confident this idea would work 'in the moment' but also be shared socially and garner extensive media coverage - this ‘noise’ would get the fact School Zones were back in operation top-of-mind, without the benefit of a massive media budget.

Our research uncovered the fact that people had almost become blind to all of the visual cues around School Zones. We needed an innovative new way to activate behaviour change at these locations.

Our Target Audience was focussed on Drivers without children and who weren't doing the school run. They had no idea that School Zones were back in action and needed reminding to slow down to 40 km/h.

We decided to use the mobile version of Spotify as a fresh way to activate a familiar message, and in conjunction with the Spotify Australia team we unlocked a way to geo-target Drivers within 5km of a School Zone location.

By doing so, we could target Drivers with a relevant message in the right place at exactly the right time, maximising our chances of causing immediate behaviour change.

We launched the project as kids returned to school for 2021. We hoped that by reminding people at this key time, the behaviour change would continue throughout the whole school year.

Along with the mobile Spotify executions which ran in-car, we also created social video versions of each song for the artists to share with over 200,000 followers. Incidentally, all of these songs were donated free-of-charge by local artists in support of the cause.

National insurer AAMI also showed their support for the project by donating the $2000 media cost for Spotify.

Over 100,000 Slow Down Songs were activated via the Spotify Mobile app during our ‘Back to School’ Trial Period.

No incidents or accidents occurred at any QLD School Zone locations during this period

Over $300,000 in earned media was achieved, across over 60 news outlets, creating the 'noise' we wanted to remind people that School Zones were back.

The Australian Road Safety Foundation has now gained approval for national roll-out in 2022.

Mobile technology has changed everything. It allows for instant activation and incredible targeting. The most successful behaviour change campaigns occur when the right message is delivered to the right people at exactly the right time.

With Slow Down Songs and the power of mobile technology we achieved that, and are hopeful that many young lives will be saved in the future.