A powerful new road safety campaign by a talented University of Technology Sydney student has gone live across oOh!media billboards and digital signage in Sydney.

The campaign is the result of behaviour change program Re:act, which challenges university students to come up with ideas to raise road safety awareness among adults aged 18 to 25 – a demographic almost twice as likely to be killed in a traffic accident than their parents, according to new data from Australian Roads.

Re:act has partnered with oOh!media to run campaigns across three cities on oOh!’s roadside digital billboards, with Sydney now going live after a recent Brisbane launch, and Melbourne to follow at a later date.

The creative will also appear on digital displays in retail, higher education and social venues. Provided at no cost, the total media value for all three campaigns is over $850,000, marking a significant contribution to spreading the safety messaging to the wider public.

The Re:act program is an initiative of creative behaviour change agency Hard Edge. In 2020 it ran at University of Technology Sydney, Swinburne University in Melbourne and, for the first time, Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. It also expanded internationally to the University of the Arts London.

UTS student Ella Mander-Jones was chosen for her campaign drawing the young audience in before delivering a strong and clear message focused on music as a distraction on our roads: ‘Make your playlist killer. Not a killer on our roads’.

“I wanted to create something different that was on trend for a young target audience,” she said.

“People around my age are very much into their playlists. ‘Killer’ has a negative connotation but can also be awesome, like a ‘killer’ playlist, so I linked the two to draw people in without them knowing off the mark that you’re talking about road safety.”

In addition to supporting the campaign through media space, oOh!media also played a pivotal role in the students’ design process, deploying personnel to work with the students as they came up with their ideas, helping shape them for maximum creativity in the Out of Home format while also providing technical support.

Noel Cook, oOh!media’s Chief Commercial & Operations Officer, said that the company was proud to support Re:act for the second year running.

“Young drivers have a higher risk of getting into accidents, which is important to be aware of at a time when ongoing COVID-19 issues are forcing more people to drive instead of taking public transport,” he said.

“This year’s theme is ‘distraction’, and it’s been a revelation to see how these gifted students have translated their objective of keeping drivers focused on the road into creative designs that will strike a chord with their age group.”

Andrew Hardwick, Re:act founder and CEO, said Re:act’s vision is to give young people a voice in road safety.

“Young people have an incredible contribution to make in reducing road trauma – statistics they are unfortunately overrepresented in,” he said. “It’s fantastic to see their work being shared in the public domain thanks to this partnership between oOh! and Re:act. This is such an amazing experience and opportunity for the students in their careers.”  

oOh!’s support for Re:act is part of the company’s broader approach to road safety. In conjunction with the Outdoor Media Association (OMA), oOh! is committed to working closely with governments and authorities to invest in research and make roads safer.

To find out more about the Re:act program, visit reactforchange.com