In the city of Almere, there are many emergency braking situations between buses and cyclists, partly because young people use the bus lane as a crossing point. The municipality, in collaboration with TeamAlert and transport company Keolis, conducts an annual campaign to reduce harmful behaviour in traffic
My mission? Help the municipality to target teens and young adults to make them aware of the dangers of the crossing points at bus lanes.
I had to make sure the experience would reward people who display safe behaviour, so they can be an good example for those who don’t.
Challenge
Create a fun awareness experience to remind young people about the dangers surrounding the crossroads, while rewarding their good behaviour.
Outcome
I created an experience, which has been well received by the clients as well as the target audience. This led to more awareness and has been implemented as an integral and recurring part of a broader campaign for several years.
Scope of Project
Campaign creation
Brand Strategy
Messaging
Experience Design
Digital and Printed Marketing Assets
My Role
Analysing the target audience
I started by analysing the target audience and the possible touch points. What would be effective when targeting teens and young people? The answer was a mix of different marketing methods.
“As a municipality, we believe it is important that cyclists, pedestrians and motorists who cross the bus lane know that ignoring the warning signals can lead to dangerous situations. … That is why we attach great value to this TeamAlert campaign and we hope that it will create more awareness.”
Concession manager City of Almere
Creating a fun experience
The experience I created was a booth where the TeamAlert information officers talked to young people to spread awareness. By keeping to the safety rules they we’re able to win prizes, ranging from shopping coupons to Apple Airpods. This resulted in an fun and effective way to communicate a serious message; Stopping for a red traffic light can save you.
By making the experience easy to move, we we’re able to target different traffic stops surrounding school area’s in a short amount of time. This meant that more people could be reached throughout the city and it prevented that the same audience would return for more prizes on the same day.
Keeping the message alive
At the area’s where we set up the booth we put up posters that repeated the message; “Bus komt er aan, blijf even staan!” (dutch for “The bus is coming, wait for it to pass“).
Last, but not least, the offline campaign was backed by a video project and online messaging, using paid- and organic media. Even the schools helped out by spreading the message on displays throughout the schools.
Results
The experience created a b̶u̶s̶ buzz at schools, where young people talked about their prizes. It was such a succes, that it is still being used (2024) as a integral part of a yearly recurring campaign.
Various local and regional news outlets even picked up the campaign, which helped spread the message with organic reach.
Credits
Clients
City of Almere
TeamAlert
Keolis
Campaign strategy
Jip Laarman
Lonneke Ziemerink
Tom Plaum
Concept
Jip Laarman
Design
Jip Laarman
Video Production
Locals Agency
Marketing Manager
Lonneke Ziemerink
Copy
Jip Laarman
press officer
Tom Plaum
Software & Tools
Adobe Photoshop | Adobe Illustrator | Adobe InDesign