Title	THE SAFETY CAKE
Brand	RENAULT
Product/Service	ROAD SAFETY
Entrant	MORTIERBRIGADE Brussels, BELGIUM
Idea Creation	MORTIERBRIGADE Brussels, BELGIUM
Media Placement	OMD Brussels, BELGIUM
PR	MORTIERBRIGADE Brussels, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Nicolas Mouquet	mortierbrigade	copywriter
Geoffrey Masse	mortierbrigade	Art Director
Joost / Philippe / Jens Berends / De Ceuster / Mortier	mortierbrigade	creative directors

Why is this work relevant for Integrated?

We set out to make Belgian drivers more aware of their behaviour on the road. This meant our budget was sized accordingly: we had the necessary means to reach our national audience online, we had no budget for offline media. A cleverly executed PR strategy resulted in a campaign which got picked up in 64 countries. Not bad for a campaign budgeted for a country the size of Belgium.

Background

Situation Cars are getting safer every day thanks to new technologies becoming increasingly available on cars in every price range. Unfortunately, the people driving those cars aren’t changing as fast. So whilst our cars are getting safer, plenty of our drivers still maintain bad habits. Brief How do you make drivers realize that all the technology in the world won’t be any good if they still behave badly themselves? We had to make them understand that their behaviour behind the wheel is of vital importance when it comes to making our roads safer for everyone. Objectives - We aimed to make road safety a public issue again. This meant we had to ensure a broad coverage amongst Belgian drivers. - We wanted to actually change behaviour, so we had to find a way to get inside people’s cars.

Describe the creative idea

Our insight is as simple as it is true: people drive safer when they’re transporting food. Whether you just went to get some Chinese take-out or stopped by a drive-thru window, you’re always that tad bit extra cautious when you’re driving around with food on the passenger seat. We translated this into our core idea: Treat your friends like a cake. Because if everybody would be driving around as if they had a fragile little cake next to them, our roads would be a whole lot safer. We created the Safety Cake: a cake specifically designed to make people drive safer since it can’t survive strong accelerations, fast turns, bumps and hard braking.

Describe the strategy

People are too often confronted to dramatic road safety messages. With Safety Cakes, we wanted to reopen the discussion about road safety in a positive way, without moralizing. The creative insight was strong, but we needed to make it tangible for journalists. So, we conducted a survey to prove that most people drive more safely when they transport food. That helped us to build a strong PR story with statistics that journalists can rely on. In order to spread the information to a wide audience, we targeted national news media, lifestyle media, youth press and journalists specialising in mobility and road safety. The campaign was introduced to journalists with the message: “The Safety Cake. The first cake that can save lives”. And the hashtag #TreatYourFriendsLikeACake invited people to treat their friends like a cake and to share the campaign on social.

Describe the execution

The campaign was launched through a national PR communication. First, we sent cakes to the most important journalists, specifically focussed on youth and road safety topics. The cake was delivered with a personalized note explaining the concept and a press kit. On August 29th we pitched the most important news media under embargo. Then, the next day, we sent a press release to the national press. Journalists started to share the story from August 30th and the story even made its way to international press in the following weeks. The PR campaign was supported by a social media posts on Responsible Young Drivers and Renaults Belgium-Luxemburg Facebook channels and later, through a distribution of cakes in Renault’s points of sale.

List the results

The Safety Cake campaign was relayed on all major national news media, including prime-time TV & radio information. But it was also relayed in some important lifestyle media. As it covered almost the whole national media landscape, it also went beyond and get some international interest. The campaign was seen in 64 different countries for a total reach of 44.6 million. And it increased road safety awareness on social media by 300%. At this time, we are still waiting the official figures to see the impact of the Safety Cake on the number of road accidents among young people in Belgium. But it’s already safe to say we put road safety back on the public agenda and made our roads safer in doing so.