The Transport Accident Commission campaign, which runs in the Australian state of Victoria, has been credited with halving that state's disastrous road toll, reducing serious injuries by 27 per cent, saving some 3,514 lives and achieving financial savings of US$4 billion in claims and costs to the community. It has also won every major creative award in the world, often many times over. And now it is in the dock. The charge: it didn't really work and was a waste of taxpayers' money. The TAC is a Government-owned organisation, funded by vehicle registration payments, which operates an insurance scheme for all road users.
The ads use a documentary-drama approach to achieve behavioural change, re-creating horrific accidents under two main themes, 'If you drink, then drive, you're a bloody idiot' and 'Don't fool yourself, speed kills'.
The campaign started in 1989 because Victoria's road toll had risen dramatically to 776. By the end of the campaign's first year, fatalities were down to 548. By 1999, it stood at 383. Tracking studies showed the campaign enjoyed 90 per cent unaided recall and 98 per cent community support.
Powerful stuff, by any standard.
The campaign is worth US$6 million a year. The same agency, Grey Melbourne, has created the ads from the word go, in concert with the client and independent researchers.
Sweeney Research has conducted qualitative and quantitative research on TAC advertising over a 14-year period. Director Brian Sweeney said that almost every TAC communication was evaluated before and after it ran. In his words, the campaign has been "phenomenally successful".
Monash University Accident Research Centre has evaluated the programme's effectiveness. Monash has conducted 12 studies, concluding that in the first years of the campaign there were "clear links between the levels of TAC publicity supporting speed and alcohol enforcement programmes and reductions in crashes."
It's ironic: a great campaign, a great client, great creative, great results, heaps of awards into the bargain, no scams, and then ... wham! Now, researchers from Transport South Australia's Safety Strategy have disputed the role of the ads.
Their conclusion: "It is likely that millions of dollars have been wasted each year on road safety advertising in Victoria since 1989."
TSA's researchers Dr Michael White and Dr John Walker have argued that the increase in crash numbers in the mid-1980s was due entirely to the economic boom, and the subsequent sharp fall in crash numbers post-1989 was due mainly to the economic bust that forced many marginally employable young males off the road. The downward trend was just waiting to happen, they reckon.
(On the other hand, Monash attributes 25 per cent of the road toll reduction to the economic downturn, and maintains that the ads were responsible for 63 per cent of the difference achieved.)
Meanwhile, media buying agency Mitchell & Partners concluded that "more than 80 per cent of television weight was wasted at excessive or negative exposure levels ... In the most recent flight over September/October, the average frequency for people 18+ was 26.8 times, with 73.8 per cent seeing the campaign more than 10 times." And so the debate rages away. Perhaps Monash has got it right: "Victoria could not have reached the levels of enforcement that it has reached unless it had an education programme to legitimise and reinforce it ..." That makes sense to me. Education and enforcement do work together for behavioural change.
But for now, I'd appreciate some advice from research gurus. Who should we believe when we get such conflicting opinions?