2014 Silver and Bronze Winner Case Study: It Can Wait: The Power of a Movement
When does a corporation’s public service campaign become a social movement? When the company’s biggest competitor calls to ask, “How can we get involved?”
That’s what happened in early 2013 when Verizon asked to participate in AT&T’s “It Can Wait” program to eliminate texting while driving, which won a Silver Anvil Award and a Bronze Anvil Award of Commendation.
Suddenly, AT&T’s multi-year public service program was reborn as a social movement. Verizon’s participation in turn sparked discussions among other competitors, including Sprint and T-Mobile, both of which joined the fight against texting while driving.
Thousands of other organizations, from the Walt Disney Company to Goodyear to the Girl Scouts, joined the movement to curb this dangerous behavior by sharing one message: No text is worth a life…It Can Wait.
Teens were the primary initial target of the campaign, for good reason. According to an AT&T national online survey of 1,200 15 to 19 year-olds, 75 percent of respondents said texting while driving is “common” among their friends. Heading into 2013, however, AT&T realized that as part of the transformation of the campaign into a social movement, they needed to broaden their audience.
So the team set out to make the campaign applicable to every driver with a smartphone. Through research, a new and surprising target was identified: adult commuters.
According to research commissioned by AT&T and conducted by FleishmanHillard, Nearly half of adult commuters admitted to texting while driving, despite knowing the risks. In fact, 98 percent acknowledged that sending a text or email while driving is not safe.
Unfortunately, for many adult commuters, texting and driving has become more than an occasional occurrence. More than 40 percent of those who admitted to texting while driving called it a habit.
Other research, in the form of an AT&T Texting While Driving Perceptions Survey, was conducted to measure the public’s awareness of the “It Can Wait” message and determine if it was changing driving behaviors.
The “It Can Wait” journey actually began in 2010 to raise awareness of the dangers of texting and driving, with awareness again being a key focal point in 2011. In 2012, AT&T moved the program from awareness to action by reaching out to schools and communities, delivering messages in key geographic markets, and encouraging people to take a pledge to never text and drive.
It was in 2013 that the campaign took on more of an advocacy direction. “It Can Wait” focused on getting the public and supporting organizations to not only to take the pledge to not text and drive, but to go one step further and speak out about the issue, urging those who were unfamiliar with the campaign to put down their phones while driving.
AT&T ironically found itself at a strategic crossroads thanks to the gathering support of other companies and organizations: it realized that it now needed to “de-couple” its brand from the very program it had created a few years earlier. AT&T embarked on a “de-branding strategy” in 2013 for its hallmark no-texting-while-driving program, smartly downplaying its own brand in the program, because “It Can Wait” officially became a social movement.
Aggressive traditional and social media activities helped drive home the “It Can Wait” message, including:
- AT&T and BBDO partnered with acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog with a 35-minutes documentary on the dangers of texting and driving, which saw more than 2 million views within two weeks of its release.
- AT&T and FleishmanHillard supported a “Directors Screening” event for the film in Los Angeles for celebrities and local stakeholders.
- The Sept. 19, 2013, “Drive 4 Pledges Day” marked the second annual pledge day for “It Can Wait,” with more than 2,000 activities nationwide and a flurry of social activity.
AT&T and FleishmanHillard championed the program through a paid and organic drumbeat of messages, alignment with partners and influencers, and chilling sharable content. One key program was “100 Reasons It Can Wait,” which included daily social activations in the 100 days between Memorial and Labor Day, the deadliest time for teen car crashes.
During that period, AT&T and its advocates launched a social campaign that shared one reason a day to not text and drive. The team enlisted advocates such as singer Demi Lovato; Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Gabby Douglas; Chandler Gerber, whose texting while driving accident killed three; parents who lost children; and dozens more to help demonstrate that there’s a compelling reason for everyone.
All social content included a singular, recognizable hashtag, #ItCanWait, and a primary call to action: “Take the pledge at ItCanWait.com.”
The 1,500-plus companies and organizations that signed onto the program supported the cause through various communication programs, and AT&T worked with VOX Global to engage 200-plus organizations across nearly 4,000 activations, including more than 1,500 school events and nearly 700 proclamations on Drive 4 Pledges Day. “It Can Wait” supporters were also active on Drive 4 Pledges Disney Parks shared the message with its 95,000-plus cast members.
Nearly 100 celebrities also promoted the importance of the program. For example, Tim McGraw, Ellen DeGeneres, Ryan Seacrest, Paula Abdul and Carly Rae Jepsen encouraged their fans to take the pledge.
Teenagers watching the “2013 Teen Choice Awards” were encouraged by the show’s hosts to take the pledge and share the #ItCanWait hashtag via Twitter, which garnered more than 15,000 visits to ItCanWait.com and nearly 140,000 tweets.
At the end of 2012, the “It Can Wait” program had generated 1.3 million no-texting-while-driving pledges. At the end of 2013, the number of pledges jumped by more than 2.7 million to a total of more than 4 million and counting.
In late 2013, AT&T began working with the departments of transportation in Florida, Illinois and Texas on measuring the correlation between the “It Can Wait” movement and reductions in traffic crashes caused by texting while driving. In 2014, preliminary findings showed “It Can Wait” led to a reduction in the number of crashes of 5.2 percent in Florida, 6.9 percent in Illinois and more than 7.8 percent in Texas.
In February 2014, the “It Can Wait” program was named one of the top 10 sustainability and social media campaigns by The Guardian in the United Kingdom.