Organisation
The Shiny Side Up Partnership (SSUP)
Amount awarded
£21,160 (for producing the videos, social media campaign and evaluation)
Completed
2022
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre
29 November 2022
Background
The Know The Dangers (KTD) campaign aims to highlight and promote awareness of the most common causes of collisions involving motorcyclists. The campaign comprised seven short films and one longer film, delivering important safety messages applicable to both drivers and powered two wheeler riders. The topics covered in the videos are considered to be common contributory factors which lead to increased motorcyclist injury risk.
The videos were promoted through a social media campaign which launched in July 2021 and built on previous SSUP resources, which included a range of infographics, presentations and diagrams for training and educational use.
The KTD videos, social media campaign and evaluation were all funded by the Road Safety Trust.
The evaluation brings together social media metrics with website analytics and responses to an online survey. It contributes to the evidence base for understanding how effective social media is when used as the primary vehicle for disseminating road safety campaign material
Evaulation of the social media campaign
The social media campaign was considered successful, with high numbers of views in each of the three waves of the campaign. There were 273,866 views of the eight films in the first eight week run. The majority of these interactions were achieved through paid advertising, showing the benefits of investing in social media promotion. In total, there were 671,892 views across the three waves.
The number of views and ‘thru plays’ of videos remained high over time, suggesting that the audience were not fatigued by the messages, and were interested in the materials month after month. The cost per click was also impressive and was also much lower than the UK average (£0.04 for KTD compared to £0.76 to £1.06), reflecting the low total cost of the campaign and the relatively high reach.
Interaction with the resources did not end with the social media; there were also distinct increases in SSUP website page views after each round of social media promotion.
Survey results
The evaluation survey sought to explore the impact of interactions with the campaign. Three-quarters of the respondents who had engaged with the films were motorcyclists, with most of them being experienced. This is reflected in the age demographics of respondents.
In total, 679 people attempted the survey. However, the majority (404) of those who attempted the survey had not viewed the SSUP – KTD materials and the survey then closed. These people were given a link to go and view the materials and then come back to share their views – 172 people did this (and therefore they are double counted in the total sample). In total, 104 respondents had previously viewed the resources.
From those who responded to the survey, it appears the resources were useful. Most respondents:
• Watched the films and applied the tips to their riding
• Found the resources engaging
• Thought they were aimed at people like them
• Thought the resources were informative
• Learnt something and could remember information contained in the resources
• Felt that social media platforms were a good method of sharing messages
• Disagreed that road safety messages are too complicated to share on social media
The free text responses regarding what they had learnt reflected the campaign aims of recognising hazards, observation, anticipation and exercising caution through defensive riding techniques. Nearly half of respondents said that their knowledge of motorcycle collisions increased and that they now follow SSUP on social media. However, only a minority regularly visit the SSUP website.
Whilst only 20% of those who attempted the survey had accessed the resources prior to that day, there did appear to be positive recall amongst this group. The survey seems to indicate that the high levels of social media interaction led to increased website visits and then positive engagement of the target audience of motorcyclists.
Learning points for road safety professionals
The evaluation suggests that social media campaigns can be beneficial for engaging with specific target audiences, especially through paid advertising.
As with any road safety communications, the objectives of the campaign need to be defined in advance, being realistic about what can be achieved through information raising. For SSUP – KTD, the aim was to increase awareness of the types of risks motorcyclists are exposed to and the use of films appears to be successful in achieving this.
the learning points can be summarised as follows:
• Social media campaigns, using engaging videos, provide a method of engaging with target audiences
• Those target audiences should be clearly defined in advance, accepting that one campaign message is unlikely to be relevant to multiple audiences
• Paid advertising greatly increases reach
• Engagement can remain high, even when new materials are posted regularly
• Messages can be recalled by target audiences 12 months later
• A low-cost campaign can achieve high reach
• Target audiences feel that social media works as a method of sharing road safety messages
The campaign videos and evaluation report can be accessed via the link below:
https://www.roadsafetytrust.org.uk/small-grants-awarded/shiny-side-up-partnership