In the United States, nearly 40,000 people die on our roads every year, with pedestrians dying at a rate two times higher than in most other industrialized countries. To drive awareness around World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims and safe driving around the holidays, Together for Safer Roads and Purpose Worldwide engaged IZEA to run a video campaign utilizing a small budget of just $25,000.
For the campaign, IZEA partnered with two video creators across Instagram within the United States; a mom/family content creator and a travel content creator to share their personal anecdotes, facts, and the importance of safe driving.IZEA leveraged two vastly different types of creators, both having a unique approach, to appeal to a larger audience and generate maximum impact.
To measure the effectiveness of this awareness campaign, IZEA set objectives to exceed IZEA’s average non-profit internal benchmarks of a 21.23% engagement rate, $1.98 cost-per-view and $1.80 cost-per-engagement.
IZEA focused its resources on finding the most ideal influencers to push the message about distracted driving. Using the IZEA Discover tool, the campaign team mined through millions of social profiles and filtered across channels, demographics and locations to find the right creators. This tool allowed the team to effectively narrow down the search and target key influencers by using advanced filters and specific hashtags. With a budget of just $25 thousand, IZEA placed a heightened emphasis on finding creators with strong engagement who also resonated with the campaign’s message.
IZEA sought out creators who have publicly spoken about the importance of safe driving and discovered two creators: a travel content creator and a mom/family content creator. To generate appeal to a larger group of social media users, IZEA strategically cast a wide net by connecting with these two creators who had completely different content and their own set of unique followers. Allowing for the message to be diversified amongst niche audiences.
The travel content creator with nearly one million followers approached the messaging with a logical and fact-based video, explaining to viewers what it means to be a distracted driver and its potential dangers. On the other hand, the mom/family content creator with a little over 100K followers, appealed to the viewers’ emotion because she tragically lost her father due to a distracted driver.
When developing the campaign strategy, the goal was to be as authentic as possible. Rather than giving the creators a script, IZEA provided a few suggestions and optional talking points, but ultimately, the execution was in the creators’ hands. The mom/family content creator was very passionate about participating because the message resonated with her on a personal level after losing her father. She was eager to work on the campaign to not only keep her father's legacy alive but also to bring much-needed awareness to a very prevalent issue. The pure emotion she conveyed allowed the audience to connect to the message in a deeper way.
The travel content creator opted to hold on posting his message about distracted driving so his other scheduled content would not take away from the importance of the campaign. He also made it a point to engage the audience by provoking thoughtful conversations and asking questions like “Are you thinking about safe driving tips during the holidays?”
The entire campaign was executed in less than two weeks and because of the timing constraints, IZEA’s team took on much of the heavy lifting by not only providing a list of recommended influencers but also providing rationale behind each choice, including follower count, links to relevant posts and specific notes to speed up the vetting process.
During the short timespan, the Together for Safer Roads team experienced changes in leadership, which subsequently affected IZEA’s main client contact for the campaign. However, because the team thoroughly researched influencers and developed a plan prior, with open communication, the teams were able to proceed with minimal interruptions and execute a successful campaign.
The overall campaign was a major success for IZEA, Purpose Worldwide, and Together for Safer Roads with a total reach of more than 1 million people. The campaign outperformed across IZEA’s non-profit vertical benchmarks. The engagement rate benchmark was 21.23% and the campaign performed at an engagement rate of 26.30%, nearly doubling the non-profit Instagram video benchmark of 14.27%. The cost per engagement was $0.09, with a benchmark of $1.80 and the average cost per view was $0.13, surpassing the benchmark of $1.98.
The campaign received more than 270 thousand total engagements (including video views). Many people took to the comments to share their appreciation for the creators sharing these messages. The mom/family content creator’s personal message touched many people as they expressed in the comments and she was thanked for sharing her father’s story. The travel content creator engaged with many people who commented, continuing the conversation about safe driving. The success of this campaign was heavily influenced by intentionally diversifying the messaging and empowering the creators to be themselves and convey the message by sharing their personal experiences, anecdotes or facts with viewers.
Together, IZEA, Purpose Worldwide, and Together for Safer Roads surpassed expectations with overwhelmingly positive engagement in the comments and increased awareness of the dangers of distracted driving.
