PAN-EUROPEAN DESIGNATED DRIVER CAMPAIGN 2006 FINAL REPORT Covering the period 01/09/2005 – 28/02/2007 CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. CAMPAIGN EVALUATION PER COUNTRY 5 2.1 Austria 5 2.2 Belgium 27 2.3 Czech Republic 38 2.4 Denmark 44 2.5 France 57 2.6 Greece 62 2.7 Hungary 79 2.8 Ireland 84 2.9 Italy 89 2.10 The Netherlands 104 2.11 Poland 119 2.12 Portugal 122 2.13 Spain 132 2.14 Sweden 144 2.15 United Kingdom 150 Annex I Annex II 2 1 INTRODUCTION This report aims to give an overview of the work phases and results of the different designated driver campaigns that have been developed in the period from 1 September 2005 to 28 February 2007 within the framework of the pan-European designated driver campaign project, co-financed by the European Commission. It was the fifth time that a similar project was carried out. To this edition, organisations from thirteen EU member states participated; Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK. For the first time, a designated driver campaign was being developed, within the scope of this project, in Austria and Sweden. The report covers the actions and campaign activities for the period 1 September 2005 to 28 February 2007. The different national campaigns all use the common concept of promoting and valorising the sober, designated driver as solution to the problem of drink-driving. As in previous editions of this project, all organisations were free to choose the creative approach for their designated driver campaign, the running period, the campaign elements and actions of which they think they have the biggest impact or deliver the best results. There are however some common, underlying concept elements and principles that are respected by all of the participating organisations. These principles are inspired by the Belgian Bob campaign that has been running since 1995 and that is now being seen as a best practice throughout Europe. The most important of these characteristics are: - Partnerships between a road safety organisation and social aspects organisations from the drinks industry guaranteeing a great impact, should be pursued - In order to bring about a real change in behaviour, the awareness raising actions should be combined with enforcement activities. This is known as the integrated approach. Ideally, the enforcement activities take place during the running time of the awareness raising campaign. - The designated driver should be depicted positively and his role should be valorised – he is much loved by his friends (or family); thanks to him they can have a party. Negative messages focussing on the negative aspects of undesired behaviour or fear induction is out of the question. - The importance of taking turn (everybody can be a designated driver) and of taking a decision about who will be the designated driver before going out, should be stressed. - Ideally, mass media activities should be combined with actions on the field, especially in catering premises. Totally in line with the partnership idea for these campaigns, some of them were brought about by road safety organisations and others were put up by social aspects organisations of the drinking industry. To the first group belong the campaigns in Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Sweden and The Netherlands. To the second group belong the campaigns in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the UK. In order to enhance the quality of the campaign evaluations, an explicit demand of the European Commission after previous editions of this project, the BIVV-IBSR project coordinator developed specifications and guidelines for the evaluation of European designated driver campaigns (please see Annex I). This document that was also part of the 3 application form and the project proposal was however not included in the contract between the European Commission and the BIVV-IBSR and its respective project partners. As a result, it was not possible to push or even enforce these specifications and guidelines as the ideal way to evaluate the different campaigns. Some of the organisations adopted (parts of the) methodology of the specifications and guidelines voluntarily, others just ignored it and continued the evaluation as they had done in previous projects. The result of this is, again, that is hardly possible to draw any general, overall conclusions for the campaigns, since there is no common ground for comparing results. When still trying to deduce some general conclusions, they could be resumed as follows: - The concept of the designated driver, of appointing someone who will stay sober and bring his friends/relatives home safely is a concept that has proved to work and to which people in the different European member states are open. - The fact of addressing people in an extremely positive way, something that can probably still be seen best in the original, Belgian Bob campaign and in the Dutch version, makes them receptive to this kind of messages since they don’t feel patronized, yet respected. - Consistent repetition of the same message seems to be a guarantee for success. All campaigns that have run over several years, bringing the same message but each time shaped in a different way, reached high familiarity and recognition scores. In communication, repetition is key. Therefore, this type of campaign will need to be kept on repeated in the future, the risk being that otherwise the message might fade out. Please find hereafter the campaign results per country (organisation) available for the above- mentioned period. In order to have some consistency in the reporting on the campaigns, the BIVV-IBSR coordination provided the project partners with a report framework; including a report structure and some must-contain elements and data. A copy of this framework is attached in Annex II. 4 CAMPAIGN EVALUATION PER COUNTRY 2.1 AUSTRIA Introduction In Austria there have been repeated campaigns focusing on the subject of alcohol, particular targets being the low-price and high-volume alcoholic drinks offered by event organisers and club operators, and the competitive drinking indulged in by some of the 16 to 25 age group. Many of these campaigns come across as being “holier than thou”, and therefore do not hit home with their target audience. An information film about alcohol, which showed very drastic pictures and which would have started at about the same time as this campaign, was rejected by club owners. With this as a background, it was very important for the project leaders, when implementing a project within the framework of the international Designated Drivers Campaign, to develop a communication channel that was both specific and appropriate to the target group. Because of the headlines about post night-out accidents that regularly fill the newspapers after the weekend, the main target group for the existing campaign was disco goers. As the domestic project partner FGM had good experience with peer group education (e.g. from the project CLOSE TO1), this constituted the principle of this campaign. The main goal of the campaign was to foster a positive attitude towards not drinking and driving and to support the driver's decision to stay sober. Social disapproval of drunk driving was to be further encouraged. The feeling of "not being ok" with drunk drivers within one's circle of friends requires continuous awareness raising efforts in order to foster social disagreement and thus cause a change in the image associated with drunk driving. Running period of the campaign The campaign ran from June 2006 until the end of February 2007. • CONCEPTUAL PHASE In Austria, the preparation phase started in March 2006 and continued to June 2006 • Concept development • Project organisation • Creation of the final campaign design • Development of advertising materials that are of interest to young people (e.g.: flip-top matchbooks, fortune cookies, website with “snapshots”) • Find/train “peer agents”; organise “peer agent” preparation meetings • Website conception • Find large clubs/discotheques and events in a total of 20 different local regions (see annex p. 25); contact discotheque owners • Cooperation meetings with the different regional administrative authorities from the selected federal states 1 CLOSE TO – Initiative to establish innovative methods in driving school education by including peers who relate of their traffic accident occurrences, 2004–2006. 5 • Creation of a jingle and video animation for video walls • Pre-test evaluation in all clubs/discotheques (600 persons) • IMPLEMENTATION PHASE Campaign from June 2006 to February 2007 The original proposal for project duration of 26 months was reduced to 18 months. Consequently, changes were also made in relation to the events scheduled to take place in the selected locations. As the majority of final school year dances take place in January and February, it was not possible to roll out the project here, and therefore the main focus of the operation was on clubs instead. Consequently, it was also not possible to carry out the original plan to concentrate on concert events in the second year. Instead, this was included as an accompaniment to the campaign in large clubs. In order to implement a face-to-face method, the cooperation of “peer agents” was necessary to communicate with and to have the full trust and acceptance of the target group. Initially, this group of “peer agents” was intended to consist of the staff in discotheques and youth clubs. However, cooperation of the staff employed at discotheques was only possible to a limited extent and mainly consisted in wearing t-shirts and handing out information material. Consequently, specially trained peer agents were assigned to so-called “event teams” whose task was to make more contact to the visitors of discotheques and events.