2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

The Paper Car is a public outreach initiative that addresses one of the biggest concerns in Dubai - Road Safety. The Insight: The average speed in Dubai is 127 km/h. Unsurprisingly, speeding is one of the leading causes of death. In early 2014, the Roads & Transport Authority 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. The Results: In two weeks, the Paper Cars got the people of the city, the social media and the press to rally around our cause and bring about an immediate change in road safety.

The Brief

For years, speeding has been one of the leading causes of death in Dubai. By September 2014, reckless speeding had claimed in 115 lives and was responsible for 1510 casualties. The Roads & Transport Authority tasked us with changing people’s attitudes towards speeding and turning around the road safety record of the city.

Results

In just 2 weeks, 50,000 people signed our Paper Cars and made a personal pledge to reduce their speed. Our cars earned 1.2 million impressions on social media. 4 national and 3 regional dailies threw their weight behind our Paper Car outreach. And thanks to the support of the people, speeding fatalities dropped by 7% and accidents by 10%. Speeding is now the 5th leading cause of death in Dubai.

Execution

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 – to the malls, universities, residential neighbourhoods and even the national highway. Our outreach connected with the man on the street. People spontaneously signed our Paper Cars. They shared their support for our cause on social media. Even the press rallied around our Paper Cars. With the support of the people, social media and press, the Paper Car brought about an immediate change in road safety.

The Situation

The Roads & Transport Authority takes pride in building a truly modern and integrated urban transport system. It is also a diligent corporate citizen. Commuter safety is one of its topmost priorities. With speeding consistently ranked as one of the leading causes of death in Dubai it was urgent and pressing for the Roads & Transport Authority to launch a public outreach campaign to tackle reckless speeding.

The Strategy

Most PR campaigns flow from mainstream media to the people. However, for our campaign to make a meaningful impact we needed to reach the man on the street first and change his attitude towards speeding. And this is what we set out to do. Our Paper Car outreach got hundreds and thousands of people to rally around our cause on the streets and then give it a voice in social media. It made even the press sit up and take notice. More than that, it brought about an immediate change in road safety.