Phone Legends - Anonymous Call

Problem:
Every weekend in New Zealand, young males drink drive. Our brief was to stop them. From research, we knew that if a member of this demographic was drunk and decided to drive home, his friends would be worried. But we also knew that his friends wouldn’t actually say anything to stop him - in the world of young adult peer pressure, this is a very un-cool thing to do. We needed a way for friends to express their concerns anonymously.

Solution:
The solution was found in mobile phones, an accessory every young male takes to the pub. We created a campaign called the Phone Legends. It works like this. First, a concerned friend chooses a Phone Legends character from a poster or beer coaster at the pub. He then texts that character’s name, along with the prospective drink driver’s mobile phone number, to our automated operator. The prospective drink driver then receives a voice message from that character on his mobile phone: a humorous yet timely reminder of the consequences of drink driving.

Result:
By using mobile phone technology we were able to reach our audience at exactly the moment they decided to drink and drive. We launched the campaign in over 200 New Zealand pubs, and to date over 12,500 concerned friends have used the service so far. It attracted national media attention and contributed to achieving New Zealand’s lowest road toll ever (2006).

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