How Social Marketing Can Reduce Fatal and Serious Injury Crashes
Shea Saladee Provides Insight on Leveraging Marketing Campaigns To Keep Drivers Safe in Latest Experts Talk Interview
The effort to eliminate deadly and serious injury crashes involves a comprehensive strategy outlined in the Safe System Approach (SSA). Social marketing campaigns can be an important tool to influence the safe road user’s element of the SSA. These focused marketing efforts are created to engage with at-risk drivers and encourage better behaviors to encourage the adoption of safer habits behind the wheel.
HDR’s Strategic Communications Social Media Team Lead Shea Saladee specializes in developing tailored strategies for clients’ social media and marketing needs. Saladee’s 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, Saladee’s campaigns are designed to encourage safer driving choices among those most likely to be involved in deadly crashes.
In the latest from HDR’s Experts Talk interview series, Saladee 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.
“This method of marketing, used for decades to encourage behaviors for the good of society, has been shown to be effective in moving audiences to action,” Saladee said. “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.”
HDR’s Experts Talk interview series shines a light on various aspects of transportation infrastructure design and delivery. Each subject matter expert offers unique expertise and insights about new and ongoing trends, emerging technologies and the human side of infrastructure.
Read the whole interview on transforming behavior to reduce traffic fatalities.
