ITD's Communication, Highway Safety offices collaborate
on college sports partnership

ITD’s Office of Highway Safety and Office of Communication collaborated with Learfield Sports this fall to write, produce and deliver media outreach in partnership with Boise State University (BSU), University of Idaho (U of I) and Idaho State University (ISU). Student-athletes from each of those universities were used in video PSAs, and radio/television spots focused on distracted driving, impaired driving, aggressive driving and seat belt use.  It marked the first time ITD had worked with all three major universities in Idaho to deliver a campaign.

The campaign capitalized on the preferred communication channel for the targeted age group – social media, videos, and texting.

To encourage engagement, fans were given a question after the players explained the issue, and then were given multiple choices to answer the question.  Fans were asked to text their answers to a specific number.  Once they texted their guess, a text was sent back to them with the correct answer and a link to the department’s Facebook site for more information on the specific topic of the week.

There were TV and radio spots with highway safety messages. The campaign also included being the challenge flag sponsor at U of I and ISU, along with the “drive of the half” for each of those two schools. Safety messages were also played during all women’s sports at U of I and ISU.

ITD also engaged Boise State men’s and women’s basketball athletes to again act out scenarios related to distracted, impaired, aggressive driving and seat belt use.  Again, they asked questions on those topics and provided answers for fans to text in.  Fans were sent a bounce back text message with the answer and a link to our website.  These PSAs were played at each home BSU basketball game.

Traffic crashes were the leading cause of unintentional injury deaths for Idahoans aged 1 to 34 years from 2011-2015. A traffic crash occurred every 22 minutes, a person was killed every 40 hours, and another was injured every 40 minutes in 2015. The estimated economic cost for Idaho motor-vehicle crashes in 2015 was more than $3.8 billion.

This was a unique campaign because it involved an interactive media campaign that allowed ITD to directly target a captive audience in a stadium, and be able to bounce back a safety message. This is also the ideal demographic to reach when putting together a traffic safety campaign.

Here are examples of a few of the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUCjRwATWPE

https://youtu.be/-O3e8aTsWV8

 


Published 02-10-17