2015 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

In just 2 weeks, 50,000 people signed our Paper Cars and made a personal pledge to drop their speed. Hundreds of thousands of people gave the Paper Cars a voice on social media urging friends and family to join in. 4 national dailies and 3 regional dailies threw their weight behind the Paper Car campaign unprompted. Thanks to the support of the people and the media, speeding casualties went by 7% in just 5 months. And speeding dropped to being the 5th leading cause of death in Dubai.

Creative Execution

The media team recognized that we needed people to get behind our call to make any significant improvement in the road safety. To do so, we took our Paper Cars all around the city - to the malls, the universities, residential neighbourhoods and even the national highway. Thousands of people signed our Paper Cars across the city. They also pushed our cause online creating over a million impressions in social media. And finally, the Paper Cars even got the attention of the press in UAE and 3 other states across the region. By taking the right message to the people, the Paper Cars pulled in a media mix of a mainstream, outdoor and social media. On a media spend of zero dirhams.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The Insight: The people of Dubai love to speed. The average speed on the highways is 127 km/h. People take it for granted that they are safe at any speed. However, speeding is one of the leading causes of death in Dubai. In September 2014, the RTA tasked us with getting everyday commuters to drive slower. The Strategy: The laws in the city already demand safe driving. However, habits are stronger than laws. So we set out to change the speeding habit to a safe driving habit. The Idea: At 100 km/h, your car is only as strong as paper. If you knew your car was that fragile at high speeds, you would surely drive slower and safer. To show people this, we built life-sized Paper Cars and took them to every corner of the city.