Pg West Safer Travel Pic

Westminster City Council

Safe travel campaign

“ This was a successful campaign, which achieved and exceeded its objectives in provoking high audience recall and buy-in, as well as shifting commuter attitudes towards planned nights out and increasing use of London’s safe travel numbers – a key behaviour change in the target audience.” Safe travel campaign evaluation study

the opportunity

the approach

the results

Westminster identified a growing problem with late night street incidents from those having travel difficulties after an evening’s drinking, especially during the run up to Christmas. They were looking for a campaign that communicated key messages but did not preach to the 18-35 year old target audience.

An integrated campaign that engaged the target audience by instilling the key message of making end of evening travel arrangements in advance. Under the banner ‘Somethings you only do when you’re drunk’ the campaign involved the tactical use of tubecards, washroom posters, adverts, web and user-driven SMS. Safe travel numbers were available from the website or pushed by SMS.

The campaign, now in its fourth year, has been taken up by several other London boroughs. It has produced very high levels of awareness and recall amongst core target groups as monitored by Westminster’s own research. Web and SMS usage continue to be very impressive and research has shown attitudinal change, which is the whole point of the campaign.