Experts Talk: Social Marketing Campaigns to Improve Traffic Safety with Shea Saladee
Experts Talk is an interview series with technical leaders from across our transportation program.
Leveraging Marketing Influence to Change Behavior and Reduce Traffic Fatalities
In 2024, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were an estimated 39,000 fatalities on U.S. roads. Transportation agencies are working to solve the problem, but it will take more than infrastructure-based solutions to achieve drastic reductions in fatal and serious injury crashes. Humans make mistakes. So how can we change driver behavior to achieve this goal?
A social marketing campaign is a focused effort to encourage safer habits and positive behavior changes to benefit people and communities. They’ve been used as a tool in engaging at risk drivers and encouraging better behaviors to improve road safety and reduce deadly and serious injury crashes. Social marketing campaigns, such as the Truth Initiative, have found success in leveraging digital and social media channels to reach target audiences and change social norms, helping reduce the percentage of teenagers who smoke to 2% today from nearly 23% in 2000.
Shea Saladee leads the social media and marketing team within HDR’s strategic communications and public engagement practice. She specializes in developing tailored strategies for clients’ social media and marketing needs. Shea holds a master's degree in integrated media communications and is certified in Social Marketing in Transportation by the University of South Florida.
Her team has worked on the development and implementation of safety messaging and driver behavior educational campaigns for many transportation-related projects at the national, state and municipal levels, including Target Zero: Florida’s Driver Safety Initiative. Grounded in research on high-risk drivers, Shea's campaigns are designed to encourage safer driving choices among those most likely to be involved in deadly crashes.
In this interview, Shea details the process of developing a behavior change campaign, addresses how to create modern and engaging communications that resonate with a targeted audience, and explains how to overcome the challenges of implementing an effective campaign to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes.
Q. Tell us more about social marketing and how it became a tool to improve road safety in recent years.
A. Social marketing for behavior change is a research-driven communication strategy commonly used to combat public health concerns and reduce negative outcomes. A prominent example is the long-running effort by health agencies and groups to reduce tobacco usage across the world. The campaign shows the negative effects of smoking through powerful messaging and captivating images that connect on an emotional level with an audience. Other successful social marketing campaigns that have been launched over the years include World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour and the U.S. Forest Service’s Smokey Bear wildfire prevention. In each case, the campaigns helped to change behavior over time as the messaging connected with and influenced the target audiences.
With more than 100 people dying on U.S. roads every day, the Federal Highway Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other federal agencies are committed to improving road safety. This has led to federal funding initiatives such as the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant program which, among other things, will fund social behavior change campaigns.
As operators and practitioners, it’s also time to rethink traditional safety improvement programs and incorporate new strategies that complement engineering solutions. Designing and building a safer roadway can help reduce crashes in a corridor; however, human behavior is a key contributing factor in these significant and fatal injury incidents.
Developing and deploying a social marketing strategy can help owners and operators address the critical human elements involved in roadway crashes. Backed by research and data, a customized campaign can be designed to reach and communicate with a key demographic involved, for instance, risk-prone drivers between the ages of 16 and 19, and over time, effectuating change in behavior.
For example, we recently brought together our team of transportation, strategic communications, behavioral and public health professionals to identify high-risk audiences from crash data. Using insights on values, socioeconomics, technology use and communications preferences, we created targeted messaging to address risky driver behavior. Social marketing campaigns are another tool to help address the complexity of reducing fatalities on our roads to achieve target zero goals.
Q. How can a behavior change messaging campaign complement other transportation safety improvements to reduce traffic deaths?
A. The five elements of the Safe System Approach adopted by the FHWA to reduce road deaths — safe roads, safe speeds, safe vehicles, safe road users and post-crash care — work together to achieve a safer transportation network. Alone, any one of the five components won’t entirely fix the problem, but together they can drastically reduce fatal and serious injuries.
Behavior change campaigns can help develop safer road users. This method of marketing, used for decades to encourage specific behaviors, has been shown to be effective in moving audiences to action. In our application of social marketing campaigns, we’re encouraging drivers who are more susceptible to fatal and serious injury crashes, to make small adjustments in their day-to-day life to reduce their likelihood of being involved in a fatal or serious injury crash. In past campaigns, we’ve urged drivers to put their phones on “do not disturb” while driving and maintain a safe distance between drivers in front of them.
It’s important to remember that behavior change messaging is just one method to improving road safety. Targeted audiences are encouraged to consider their actions before getting behind the wheel and while on the road to reduce risks. While planning and implementing engineering solutions to prevent serious injury or deadly crashes is a proven tactic, these efforts can take years to complete. A behavior change campaign can reach people immediately by raising awareness and influencing behaviors — complementing the work of planners and engineers who are focused on improving the design, construction, operation and maintenance of roadway corridors and infrastructure.
Q. What does an effective strategy to change the behavior of a key group of drivers look like?
A. Successfully encouraging people to make a shift in their behaviors requires an understanding of who you’re trying to reach. What are they like? Who do they listen to? What motivates them? HDR uses audience segmentation strategies to shape campaign development, considering demographic factors like age and gender; geographic factors like city, state and region; psychographic factors like values and motivations; and behavioral factors like social media use, online behavior and purchasing habits.
When developing a campaign, our strategic communication professionals work alongside a diverse team of engineers, data analysts and behavior scientists to review crash data to learn when and where crashes were happening and who was involved. We also dig deeper to best surmise why these crashes are occurring. That’s where audience insights became critical. We know that the more data we have to work with, the more effective our communications will be.
During development of one recent campaign for a transportation agency, we found that over half of the deaths and serious injuries crashes on its roads involved a young, male driver. To better understand these drivers and how to reach them, the team conducted in-depth research, including focus groups and interviews to learn about life experiences, challenges, values, priorities, dislikes, influences and where they consumed content. It revealed the experiences of these young men often led to dangerous behavior choices behind the wheel. For example, stress caused agitation and aggression while driving, overcommitment led to poor time management and thus speeding, and the need to be in constant contact led to phone use and distracted driving.
The findings guided the development of content that would resonate with this audience, with the goal of getting them to think about their actions before getting into the car. Key messages were crafted to feel authentic to the audience and presented in a relatable way while considering language choices, pop culture references and contemporary norms. Sometimes this will mean deviating from some of the old-school, rules-based social marketing campaigns like “Click It or Ticket” and “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over.” For this campaign, we avoided the use of stock images and instead created illustrations (à la social media meme culture) overlaid on familiar, scenic backgrounds and included Lo-fi music — popular with younger people — to engage their senses.
Q. What are the challenges associated with developing a behavior change marketing campaign?
A. Social marketing campaigns require an open mind and can lead to rethinking how to reach people. Our research has shown that reinforcing positive behavior resonates more with young men than traditional messaging focused on facts, rules or fear. We’ve also reimagined what safety messaging could be by leaning into the humor or absurdity of everyday occurrences, using highly visual and minimal, yet engaging, messaging and contemporary outreach methods to meet safety funding requirements.
This shift in engagement strategy and targeted messaging is central to social marketing and can be challenging for some transportation agencies. It’s new territory for many and often comes after they’ve implemented other safety improvement projects with limited success. It can take time to build support for a modern social marketing campaign that uses messaging, branding, social media platforms and other communications methods in new ways. When this is the case, explaining the methodology, data and statistics during the onset of planning conversations can result in a greater understanding of the communication strategy, willingness to try new tactics and stronger partnerships throughout the life of the project’s campaign and beyond.
Involving the right stakeholders, such as law enforcement, health care systems and others aligned within the Safe System Approach during planning and implementation, can establish equal ownership of the initiative, strengthen partnerships, and reduce conflict or resistance to participating in the campaign.
Q. How are these campaigns executed to reach intended audiences and achieve safer driving behaviors?
A. Reaching a specific audience requires an understanding of where they prefer to consume their media. During campaign development, in addition to learning about the types of content our drivers prefer to consume, we also learn about their platform preferences, helping direct the placement of our campaign concepts. Once finalized, the campaign messages are launched using the paid, earned, shared and owned (PESO) marketing model.
A combination of organic and paid messaging allows for a more holistic and robust outreach approach. The strategic placement of messages, videos and graphics on an agency’s social media channels builds a sense of community and trust between the public and the agency. On one campaign, out of the nearly 200 organic social media posts published, messages with humor and pop culture references proved to be the highest performing, with nearly half a million impressions and thousands of interactions. While they may not all be our target audience, we know we’re reaching family, friends and loved ones to help support and share the message of safer driving habits.
Paid placement of content on social media and other popular methods, such as video and music streaming platforms, and billboards can help further the reach with the intended audience. On that same campaign, more than 160 million paid impressions were recorded with this approach across three regional campaigns.
As with many other transportation safety initiatives, data and data trends — for instance, crash data — will take time to gather and analyze for long term impact. In practice, industry success is often based on implementing strategies tied to established crash reduction factors, with future studies evaluating true before and after findings. However, early metrics like impressions, engagement, sentiment and recall can provide more immediate insight into audience reach. Combined with measures like vehicle speeds before and after a campaign, these social approaches can help gauge overall engagement effectiveness.
When it comes to using social marketing to change behavior on our roads, I think we’re just scratching the surface of possibilities. I’m eager to see how these strategies will continue to be implemented in reaching audiences more effectively, changing behaviors, and making a lasting impact.
Inspiration & Advice
Q. What got you interested in social media and strategic communications?
A. I have a passion for storytelling and connecting with audiences in creative ways. Working in social media allows me to use my communication skills in a fast-paced and dynamic environment, providing critical information to communities while simultaneously serving as a steward of a brand or agency. The social media landscape is constantly evolving, and it challenges me to adapt. Social media is truly an art and science — creativity meets data analytics. I don’t think it gets any better than that.
Q. What advice do you have for others interested in this field as a career?
A. It’s my belief that most social media managers thrive in chaos. I think we like the unpredictable nature of the job. Social media professionals have complex and unique skillsets. Not only must social media professionals craft great content, but they also need an understanding of individual platforms, their algorithms, data and metrics, the ad buying processes, audience expectations, user demographics and trends. All of which can make or break campaigns. If you’re interested in working in the social media field, there are degree programs at universities to help you build skills in this profession — and be sure to stay up to date on your pop culture.
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