Reconsidering Motorcycle Safety at Purdue:
Authors: Carin Kosmoski, Marifran Mattson, Jennifer Hall
Corresponding Author: Marifran Mattson, Ph.D., Purdue University, Department of Communication, Beering Hall, Room 2114. 100 North University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907, mmattson@purdue.edu.
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Audience |
Message |
Channel |
Motorcycle Riders |
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Bus Signs |
Other Drivers |
Everywhere
Safety is Where
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Bus Signs |
Friends & Family |
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Post Cards |
In addition to focusing on the external communication with the target audiences, the strategic plan also outlined an internal communication plan (a step intended to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign team as well as minimize errors due to communication failures.) The plan specified meeting frequency and the procedure for taking and distributing meeting minutes. Overall, the plan stressed the importance of keeping all team members aware of campaign happenings and issues in a timely and thorough manner.
The final area the strategic plan addressed was the formation and maintenance of strategic partnerships. Some of the primary partnerships that were considered were ABATE, the Purdue University football team, and the local bus company. For example, by partnering with ABATE, a widely respected rider organization, the safety campaign was able to obtain legitimacy and appear less threatening to motorcycle riders. The campaign team also decided to partner with the Purdue University football team for several reasons: the team is popular on campus and in the community, the football season coincides with a portion of the motorcycle season, and football gear protects football players just as motorcycle gear protects motorcycle riders.
The campaign team recognized the importance of effectively communicating with these partners in order to successfully execute joint projects. Therefore, it was included in the strategic plan that it is necessary to keep all partners, funders, and stakeholders who express an interest in the campaign informed of our decisions and progress throughout the duration of the campaign. The plan listed the events such as a campus activities fair, homecoming, and spring festival events in which the campaign team involved partners. The plan also called for the cultivation of additional partnerships with local businesses, including motorcycle dealerships, to increase the campaign's credibility among riders and campus community members. These partnerships would also increase the resources available to successfully implement and maintain the campaign.
The process of developing campaign messages and promotional items for the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign was closely linked with social marketing and the MMHCC.1 It involved three stages. The first stage of message development utilized information gleaned from formative research to develop draft versions of possible messages and promotional items. The second stage was to test the draft messages with members of the three target audiences. The purpose of the third stage was to finalize campaign messages by combining information from the target audiences, scholarly research on effective message components, and the informed judgments of the campaign personnel.
According to the MMHCC,1 a campaign team should develop campaign messages while taking into account stimuli, motivational cues, appraisals of environment and resources, organizational factors, and cultural influences that pertain to the campaign's target audiences. When developing the first draft of messages for the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign, the campaign team specifically considered the stimuli (what would get target audiences to attend to messages), the resources (what target audiences need from messages), and cultural factors of the target audiences. Because the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign is campus based, the majority of the audience consists of traditional college-aged students. During the formative research process, students indicated that they were exposed to an overwhelming number of advertisements and messages in the forms of flyers, posters, television and radio commercials, and even emails. The campaign team realized that in order to get the attention of college students the campaign messages would need to stand out among all the other messages this audience receives.
Turning attention to the resources aspect of message development, the campaign team learned through the needs assessment that the campaign messages had to fulfill a different need for each target audience. For motorcycle riders, the messages needed to convey the importance of safety gear and safe riding practices; for drivers of other vehicles, the messages needed to increase awareness of motorcyclists on the road; for friends and family members of motorcyclists the messages needed to encourage communication with riders about safety. Finally, taking into consideration cultural aspects of the target audiences gleaned from focus group feedback, the team realized that both the motorcyclists and college students could be described using adjectives including risk taking, edgy, and controversial.
Keeping in mind the stimuli, resources and culture of the target audiences, as outlined by the MMHCC,1 the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign team developed numerous messages and ideas for promotional items. One of the favorite messages aimed at the friends and family target audience, was a picture of a wildly unattractive female with the saying, "You wouldn't let your friend go home with that ugly girl from the bar, why would you let him ride unsafely? Talk to your friends about riding safely." (Figure 2). The campaign team was confident that this was the risqué, edgy message that would grip the attention of the target audience and compel them to pay attention. In addition to this and eight other messages, the campaign team also developed three versions of the campaign logo, a website, and numerous ideas for promotional items including t-shirts, pens, and air fresheners.
The second stage of the process was testing the draft messages and promotional items developed by the campaign team. The MMHCC1 stresses the importance of pre-testing messages with members from the target audiences before utilizing the messages in the campaign. The messages and promotional items that were developed by the campaign team were pre-tested in six focus groups consisting of members of the target audiences. Participants in the focus groups were students, faculty, staff, and community members who were recruited through flyers posted around campus. Two focus groups for each of the three target audiences were conducted. Attendees were shown sample messages, logos, websites, and promotional items and were asked to share their opinions. Information from the focus groups led to major revisions of the campaign messages and ideas for promotional items. Much to the campaign team's dismay, the favorite message previously described received overwhelmingly negative feedback from all focus groups. The message was considered too wordy, required too much thought and time to process, was offensive, and no one liked the picture of the unattractive girl.
One message that tested very positively with the focus groups surprised the campaign team because it was one of the team's least favorite messages. This message showed a picture of intersecting street signs including popular campus streets as well as "awareness" and "respect" as the top two street names on the pole. The accompanying message stated, "Motorcycle safety is where awareness and respect intersect" (Figure 3). The campaign team had little confidence in this message because they felt it was not edgy enough to capture the attention of the target audiences. However, the focus groups concluded that the straightforward, simple but clever message emphasized the point of motorcycle safety and made the message relevant to the campus campaign by using local street names. Based on the focus group feedback, the campaign team revised the original messages. Sample promotional items were also tested during the focus groups and the campaign team quickly learned that college students as well as faculty and staff value free items that are useful. Therefore, the most popular promotional items identified in the focus groups included t-shirts, pens, and key chains.
The third stage of the message development process was the finalization of campaign messages and promotional items for the initial launch of the campaign. This stage was challenging for the campaign team because it required them to synthesize the feedback received from the focus groups, the information gleaned from scholarly research on message design, and their informed judgments to determine what messages and items should be disseminated. Based on the synthesis of this information, the team selected three messages to begin the campaign. These messages included the intersecting street signs message described previously, a motorcycle caution sign with the message, "Watch for Motorcycles Everywhere," (Figure 4) and a football themed message, "Gear Up Purdue," which was accompanied by a digitally enhanced picture of a football player dressed in football gear on half of his body and motorcycle gear on the other half (Figure 5). These messages all tested well in the focus groups and were liked by the campaign team. The campaign team decided on promotional items including t-shirts, pens, bumper stickers, motorcycle tank magnets, puzzle booklets, and key chains. The decision regarding the type of key chain illustrates a situation where it was difficult to synthesize the feedback from focus groups and the campaign team's judgment. The majority of focus group participants indicated that their favorite key chains were those that doubled as bottle openers. However, the campaign team was concerned that distributing bottle openers would encourage drinking and perhaps counter the message of safe riding and driving practices. Therefore, the campaign team made the difficult decision to go against the feedback from the target audiences and follow their judgment to distribute plain gel-type key chains instead of bottle openers. Though determining the final campaign messages and promotional items was a challenging task, the decisions made by the campaign team, but informed by research, seem to be effective.
For the implementation of the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign, the campaign team focused on three major factors: timing, breadth, and depth. This section describes how these factors were crucial to the implementation of the campaign and how the team capitalized on opportunities to increase campaign exposure while influencing target audience members.
The timing of the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign launch was crucial for two reasons; first, it needed to coincide with the beginning of an academic semester at the university and second, it needed to be during motorcycle riding season. Launching the campaign at the beginning of an academic semester was imperative to campaign evaluation. During the first week of the Fall 2006 semester the campaign team administered pre-campaign surveys to a randomly selected sample of the university population (n=556). After the pre-test survey period was completed, the campaign was rolled out on campus. It was also crucial that the campaign was launched during motorcycle riding season which, in the state of Indiana, is between the months of March and October. Had the campaign been implemented during the off-season it would not have made much sense to the target audiences. The campaign was therefore strategically launched in August to coincide with the beginning of an academic year and prime motorcycle season.
The second consideration for campaign implementation was breadth or exposure. The campaign team crafted messages specifically designed for the target audiences, but needed a way to get these messages to the audiences. To accomplish this, campaign messages were run on Boiler TV (the campus television station) and messages were displayed inside the city buses that served the campus. The messages placed on Boiler TV were run on a continuous loop for the maximum number of times per day (which changes daily based on programming schedules.) There were two bus signs placed inside each of the 30 campus buses. These two strategies were utilized to distribute the campaign messages to a large number of audience members at low cost. The campaign team also submitted a press release to local news outlets, and in response, news stories were run in the campus newspaper, the surrounding community newspaper, and on the local public radio station. These news stories helped bring campaign exposure to campus as well as to the surrounding community.
The final consideration when implementing the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign was depth or influence of the messages. The campaign team realized that simply posting signs and presenting ads would not influence the target audience to the extent necessary; therefore, the campaign provided a booth at three campus events in order to have face-to-face interactions with audience members. The interactive booth included a table-top display containing the campaign messages, a raffle to win items donated by campaign sponsors, giveaways of promotional items and a representative from a local motorcycle dealership with a motorcycle and safety gear. The raffle and the presence of the motorcycle and safety gear were utilized to draw people's attention to the booth. Once people approached the booth, campaign team members would strike up a conversation and determine which target audience the individual represented in order to spread the appropriate motorcycle safety message. The table-top display was utilized to illustrate the safety messages during conversation, and promotional items, including puzzle booklets and conversation starters, were distributed so that visitors could take away the motorcycle safety message. The interactive booth at campus events provided an opportunity for the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign team to not only spread campaign messages to numerous people, but to influence through interpersonal communication, as many people as possible.
Process evaluation for the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign has been an evolving process. The strategic plan of the campaign outlined the importance of inventory tracking. This aspect of the process evaluation has occurred as scheduled. The campaign team keeps track of the number of promotional items ordered and distributed in an attempt to establish the reach of the campaign as well as to make decisions regarding the effectiveness of each promotional item. For example, according to inventory tracking, only 145 of 500 motorcycle tank magnets have been distributed after three very successful campus events. This illustrates to the campaign team that this promotional item has not been as popular as expected and is not serving the purpose of disseminating the campaign message. Therefore, once all the in-stock magnets are distributed they will be phased out and no longer utilized as a promotional item.
This process evaluation also helps to determine approximately how many people the campaign is reaching overall. By tracking the number of promotional items distributed as well as counting the number of people who approach the campaign booth during events, the campaign has reached approximately 686 individuals. This approximation is a conservative estimate, however, because this process evaluation method does not include an accurate technique to estimate the number of individuals who have been reached by bus signs, newspaper advertisements or BoilerTV advertisements.
Because the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign is still in its first year there have been few other changes or improvements implemented thus far. The campaign team plans to continue inventory tracking to make decisions regarding promotional items. It also continues to analyze feedback from members of the target audiences to improve the campaign. Post-test surveys will be distributed at the end of the Spring 2007 semester and the data will be used to evaluate and improve the campaign. The post-test surveys ask participants to indicate to which target audience they belong, and indicate their familiarity with the campaign. The information from these post-test surveys will allow the campaign team to determine an approximation of the number of people from each target audience the campaign has reached.
As with any health campaign, implementation brings to light campaign successes and failures. Throughout the campaign process, the campaign team strove to follow the tenets of social marketing and the MMHCC. One of the central principles of social marketing is to know the audience and to adapt campaign messages and activities accordingly.13 The motorcycle safety campaign was able to do this from the very beginning by conducting a thorough needs assessment and segmenting the audience into three distinct target audiences. Not only did the needs assessment determine the target audiences' informational needs, but it also uncovered the attitudes and beliefs that the campaign needed to change. It also revealed attitudes and beliefs that the campaign could build upon, such as the riders' belief that motorcycle training courses were beneficial.
Although the needs assessment provided baseline data and direction for the campaign, there were some limitations to the research. One of the greatest challenges the campaign team experienced was obtaining accurate local statistics. Most of the statistics available were from the state and national levels. There was some county-level data from which the team could extrapolate, but there were no statistics regarding the number of registered motorcyclists on campus. In addition, a large portion of the audience was students who did not permanently reside in the county, so it was very likely that their motorcycles were registered elsewhere. Without local statistics including motorcycle registrations and number of accidents, it was impossible to determine the actual size of the motorcycle rider segment and it was difficult to assess the extent of the problem. Ultimately, this affected the team's ability to craft locally and personally relevant messages.
Due to resource limitations, the team had to rely on a convenience sample for the needs assessment, so it was uncertain if the responses of those interviewed and surveyed were representative of the larger audience segment. One of the most difficult audience segments to gain access to was motorcycle riders because their relative numbers were smaller than the other two target audiences. By making contact with more riders, the needs assessment may have revealed different information, or identified subgroups within this audience segment. Other groups in the campus community that were underrepresented across all of the target audiences during the needs assessment were faculty and staff. Gaining access to faculty and staff was more challenging because the university does not offer a centralized way to contact them and request participation. This caused concern because the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of these groups were probably different from those of the students.
The development of the strategic plan was an important component of this campaign because it required that the team consider the many facets of the campaign prior to becoming immersed in the implementation. The strategic plan also was helpful because it directly connected the audience research to the various components of the campaign, including the messages, website design, and partnership implementation. However, one of the major limitations, which led to continual revisions to the strategic plan, was that some of the aspects of the campaign, such as the budget and timeline, were based on estimated funding or anticipated timing.
Another positive aspect of this campaign was that it utilizes quality messages that have been tested and approved by target audience members. Thorough testing of these messages prior to campaign implementation and message dissemination ensured that only effective messages were utilized for the campaign. Had such strenuous message testing not been conducted, messages may have been disseminated that did not resonate with the target audiences. The example of the "ugly girl" poster described earlier illustrates the importance of thorough message testing to avoid using ineffective messages. Although the messages for this campaign were rigorously tested and approved by the target audiences, the critique can be made that these messages lack substance (e.g., facts and statistics pertinent to motorcycle safety). It can be argued that the signs and ads used to generate the greatest amount of exposure for the campaign lack important facts and statistics that may be more persuasive than the messages currently in use. While the campaign team realizes the importance of generating exposure for the campaign, they are concerned about relying on a few campus activities and a few key messages to relay the substance and complexity of the motorcycle safety issue to the target audiences.
Although the timing of the campaign implementation seemed logical, each reason used by the team can be countered. Launching a campaign at the very beginning of not only a new academic semester, but also a new academic year, may not be the best timing. This is an especially busy time for people on a college campus and they may not attend to a campaign survey or campaign messages. Also, launching a safety campaign in the middle of motorcycle riding season may seem illogical to audience members. It may have made more sense to launch in March which is the very beginning of a new motorcycle riding season.
A final positive aspect of the campaign is that it was created as the result of a personal experience. This is helpful when interacting with audience members because team members can tell the story and try to personalize the issue of motorcycle safety for audience members. However, this also has been a challenging aspect of developing the campaign; the team members are so personally involved with the issue of motorcycle safety it has at times been difficult for them to make decisions based on research or consumer opinions rather than their personally held attitudes and beliefs.
The Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign was developed and launched with the goal of increasing awareness about motorcycle safety and ultimately making the campus and surrounding roads safer for everyone. Guided by the Messaging Model of Health Communication Campaigns, an extension of the social marketing framework, the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign exemplifies the successful integration of campaign theory and practice. Through a discussion of the planning, implementation, and critical analysis of the campaign, this case study can be used to develop best practices. Although the Motorcycle Safety at Purdue campaign came about by accident, it has uniquely informed health campaign pedagogy, campaign model building, research, and community outreach.
The Motorcycle Safety at Purdue Campaign has been made possible through funding from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts, as well as the hard work and dedication of campaign team members Iccha Basnyat, Induk Kim, Katie Wiesner, and Kindra Hunckler.
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