The Click It or Ticket program was conceived in North Carolina in 1993. It was the first statewide occupant protection campaign in the United States. Since its inception, The national Click It or Ticket seat belt enforcement campaign has become an annual event. Each year during the Memorial Day holiday, law enforcement officers conduct stepped-up and highly visible seat belt enforcement to save lives.
However, over the years, one critical demographic has remained resistant to the CIOT core message––one in 10 Americans are still not buckling up when they get in their vehicle. We need to convince these holdouts to buckle up.
Overarching Objective
Get young men (18-34) to wear their seat belt every time they drive or ride in a vehicle by promoting enforcement of seat belt laws and the costly consequences of not buckling up by creating a new awareness campaign.
Secondary Objectives
Bust the Myths
Vehicle type: There seems to be a misconception among those who drive and ride in pickup trucks that their large vehicles will protect them better than other vehicles would in a crash.1
Seating position: Too many people wrongly believe they are safe in the back seat unrestrained.2
Rural versus urban: People who live in rural areas might believe that their crash exposure is lower, but in 2018, there were 12,068 passenger vehicle fatalities in rural locations, compared to 10,330 fatalities in urban locations.3
We tapped into the most tried and true way to get through to hundreds of millions of listeners daily: humor. To do so we enlisted legendary comedian Will Ferrell to create a series of breakthrough messages in the voice of his iconic character Ron Burgundy.. Will created (7) distinct versions of audio creative featuring outrageous fictional stories and pontifications around the consequences of not buckling up that were turned into a series of :30/:60 units. The units were aired on national and local broadcast radio, as well as on digital platforms, including prominent placement within "The Ron Burgundy Show."
While the entire series of audio creative deviated from NHTSA's traditional campaigns, each piece of creative included NHTSA's signature line of "Click-it-or-Ticket" along with a line from Will encouraging drivers to buckle up. The campaign shifted from the initial use of :60 units to introduce the campaign to :30 to increase scale and frequency across the targeted audience.
We anchored the creative behind the reach and influence that both Will, and "The Ron Burgundy Show" had with the target market. The show was used as the kicking off point for a comprehensive audio campaign that utilized all facets of our national, local and digital networks to reach these holdout drivers wherever they listen to content.
The spots featured "Ron" humorously conveying the potential price seatbelt holdouts could pay for not buckling up in a way only he can, contrasted with the most common excuses drivers give for not buckling up. Ron wouldn't accept “I wasn’t going that far” or “Seat belts are just uncomfortable” as an excuse, and was more than happy to offer his own wildly relevant (and irrelevant) stories to prove his point. This was not just an “actions have consequences” PSA campaign—the messages used NHTSA's Click-it-or-Ticket ethos and expanded it, playing into young adults’ fear of missing out and love of comedy. The series of (7) :30 and :60 spots ran across iHeartMedia terrestrial radio, streaming audio and podcast networks, including "The Ron Burgundy Show" — making sure we reached drivers wherever they were listening.
