Yet again, the fact that I am attempting to change behaviors as opposed to selling a product poses some interesting challenges. The most difficult aspect of this exercise was simply determining what it is that the AAA Foundation is truly selling. Ultimately I decided that the foundation is in the business of selling safe driving behavior. Even still, the attributes of safe driving that need to be emphasized for the foundation to be successful are not obvious. There are indeed obvious benefits to safe driving but they are not compelling enough within themselves to drive sustainable behavior change in teen drivers. With a retention/earn share strategy I focused on identifying a compelling experience attribute that would eclipse the benefits of cell phone usage, the behavior that the foundation is trying to earn share from. My thoughts on the foundation's product and corresponding search, experience and credence attributes are outlined below.
Product: Safe Driving
The foundation is trying to sell the behavior of safe driving to teenagers. By minimizing or eliminating cell phone usage while driving teens choose safe driving behaviors in lieu of distracted driving practices.
ATTRIBUTES:
Search:
Research - There are a great deal of statistics on the causes of traffic accidents, and numerous studies on the impact of various distractions, including cell phone usage, on driver reaction time and overall performance.
Testimonials - While there are probably not many testimonials on the joys of safe driving there are a multitude of testimonials from victims and the family members of victims of distracted drivers.
Experience:
Experience attributes for safe driving are difficult to ascertain. A great majority of the time safe driving and unsafe driving feel the same and yield the same results for the driver in question. It is sometimes very difficult to pin point the moments that the benefits of safe driving manifest themselves. Who can say that they avoided an accident because they were not using their cell phone at a certain moment in time? It is much easier to identify cell phone usage and other distractions as the culprits after an accident has occurred. Perhaps one way to gain a better understanding of the experience attributes of safe driving is to record the driver or have a passenger evaluate driver performance pre and post safe driving behavior adjustments. However even this approach may not be enough to drive sustainable changes in behavior.
Given the Foundation's retention/earn share strategy they must find a way to leverage experience attributes to differentiate safe driving behavior from cell phone usage. Given the nebulous nature of the accident avoidance experience attribute the foundation would be wise to focus on a more tangible experience attribute such as freedom and mobility. With the help of the Foundation's media plan teens will begin to equate safe driving with maintaining their freedom and mobility. They will consume more 'safe driving" at the expense of cell phone usage because while cell phone usage has its advantages, safe driving ensures that they maintain the freedom and mobility that they desire. This experience attribute will become increasingly strong as teens begin to hear about peers who have lost their driving privileges due to failure to adhere to safe driving expectations.
Credence:
For a small portion of the target audience there may be opportunities to appeal to them on the basis of the credence attributes of safe driving. There are a few teen drivers who might value the idea of being more socially responsible than their peers by putting their texting and talking desires on hold to create a safer driving environment for others on the road. You may also be able to persuade a certain number of teens that cell phone usage while driving is so irresponsible and so dangerous that they would be stupid to do it. This approach would be similar to the way some organizations attempt to discourage other potentially destructive behaviors such as smoking and drug abuse.
You state that anti-smoking/drug campaigns show irresponsiblity to discourage teens from doing the behaviors, but something you should really consider is how much those campaigns horribly backfired. Campaigns that used fear tactics or guilted teens more often than not illicit responses of rebellion and increases in those actions. The truth campaign (which is one of my first blog posts if you want to check it out) did the opposite by positing teens against "the man" of big tobacco for lying, thus putting teens in a position of power to rebel AGAINST smoking rather rebelling BY smoking. Using past campaigns for backup is smart, but the campaigns you state were actually pretty bad. Remember the anti-marijuana campaigns where teens showed driving accidents? Statistics show that led to more pot smoking.
ReplyDeleteWhen health behavior campaigns show the negative effects of a behavior, but the teen already engages in the behavior regularly without seeing any of those negative effects, instead it reinforces that "authority" is wrong and doesn't understand them, so the ads are discounted.
Oprah does use testimonials, so that episode is something to check out and it is free online.
Another thing, your campaign depends on there already being adverse policy incentive. So unless all states do suspend licenses for texting while driving, the ads will not have credence. Are you presupposing that change, and a campaign/lobbyists to make it?