The Transport Accident Commissions (TAC) and the Australian Football League (AFL) Victoria have shared a partnered sponsorship agreement for over 10 years. In the past they have targeted elite football players to help spread their various messages. However, with the road toll up 59% in July 2019, the TAC needed to shift focus from the elites and start a conversation in local, rural towns who were vastly overrepresented, about the importance everyone plays in road safety, and how they can help in achieving the TAC’s goal of zero deaths and serious injuries on the roads.

For the TAC Towards Zero Round, we gave football club captains, the spokespeople for their respective communities, a message they could wear. A new number that had never been worn on a Australian football field before: Zero. The only acceptable number of deaths on our roads.

To explain the significance of the new number we hosted and filmed two special jersey presentations with a twist: They were held by community members who were directly affected by the trauma on the roads. The jerseys were presented to the captains with the context of what the number meant to those intensely affected by the trauma of a road accident.

Our strategy was to allow the community to start the conversation amongst themselves. Every local community had been affected by someone losing their lives on the road and needed to provide them a medium to tell their stories. So we went to the hub of every community; their local football club, to start the conversation and create a way for them to have the conversation amongst themselves and to unite behind the vision.

We began by filming two special jersey presentations, each detailing a community’s story where road trauma had hit home the hardest, and showing the captain and onlookers how significant the problem is in the community that surrounds them. Following this, we send out sent out the new jerseys to every football club in bespoke packaging that invited them to film their own presentations.

With nearly every community affected by the problem, they told their own stories, and gave context to their communities about the importance of the number.

Before the round, almost every club had hosted and filmed their own jersey presentation, and shared it on their social channels, educating their wider community on the cause. Every club became an ambassador for our message, and every captain wore it on their back. The round saw over 1000 clubs wear zero, with over 1000 presentations held and 1000 conversations started.

The presentations and meaning behind the number was publicised by over 200 media outlets, and telecast by every major news provider in the country, garnering a total of 46.6+ million impressions, predominantly built out of the user-generated content coming straight from the personal stories of the communities themselves.

The round itself, and wearing of the zero jersey, was made an annual event reminding every community that even one death on our roads, is too many.