'Got wheels? Get a helmet!' Gets the attention of media, parents.

In 2002, Safe Kids Canada (SKC), a charitable organization dedicated to preventing childhood injuries, took safety head on. Each spring, the organization and Johnson & Johnson join forces for Safe Kids Week, a national campaign to raise public awareness about a specific safety issue. For Safe Kids Week, 3-9 June 2002, SKC engaged Environics Communications Inc., a North American public relations agency, to develop a national awareness program about safety on wheels. The result was a clear and simple message for parents and children ages 5 to 14: "Got Wheels? Get a Helmet!"

OBJECTIVES

SKC and Environics set the following campaign objectives:

* Generate at least 25 million positive media impressions through national and regional media coverage.

* Increase parents' awareness of ways to prevent injuries to children on wheels.

* Motivate parents to change their children's safety behaviour with respect to safety on wheels.

* Position SKC as a national authority on childhood safety.

* Reinforce the commitment of SKC's corporate sponsor, Johnson & Johnson/McNeil Consumer Healthcare, to family safety.

Environics' strategy involved making news through high-profile launch events; providing parents with simple, enforceable messaging; working with local grassroots SKC partners; and promoting the national retail program (in-store Johnson & Johnson product displays carrying campaign information).

IMPLEMENTATION AND CHALLENGES

Each year, SKC competes with several other safety-related campaigns. Adding to this challenge, Environics was working with a theme that received substantial media coverage preceding the campaign. A new bike helmet law in Alberta and a controversial recommendation out of the U.S. stating that children younger than 8 should not ride scooters garnered much media attention in early 2002.

To overcome this obstacle, Environics developed a new story angle by focusing on all wheeled activities, spotlighting safety messaging for bikes and for new and emerging wheeled activities (scooters, in-line skates and skateboards). Because Environics had to convey safety messaging around four kinds of "wheeled" vehicles, it decided to focus on a dominant central message. The most important element of safety on wheels is to ensure that children wear helmets during all of these activities. Thus the slogan "Got Wheels? Get a Helmet!"

Environics publicized Johnson & Johnson's commitment to family safety by ensuring that the company's logo appeared on all materials. The agency also recommended that Johnson & Johnson donate more than CDN$100,000 worth of helmets to kids in need across the country. Environics then leveraged this donation at launch events, throughout news releases and during media pitches.

Safe Kids Week kicked off with events in Toronto and Montreal. To generate media interest and capture more in-depth coverage, Environics conducted a poll of 11-to-14-year-olds to provide a realistic picture of their helmet use and the role parents play in influencing safety. The survey, which was released at the events, showed that more than half (55 percent) of the preteens and teens polled don't always wear helmets when they ride bicycles; 70 percent don't always use helmets when wearing in-line skates; and 84 percent don't always wear helmets when riding skateboards and scooters.

In addition, at each event a child gave an account of how a helmet saved his life during a bicycle accident, or a mother recounted how her child sustained a head injury while riding without a helmet.

To draw the media's interest in photographing the events, Environics set up four interactive stations showing kids demonstrating safe wheeling practices and created a "Wall of Helmets" as a backdrop to illustrate Johnson & Johnson's donation.

MEASUREMENT AND EVALUATION

The campaign exceeded expectations by garnering more than 46.3 million positive media impressions. There were no errors in the accuracy of the safety information in media coverage, and all stories carried some, if not all, of the main messages. Many of the news stories covering the campaign were longer and had more depth, more context and better placement than those covering previous campaigns. For example, the 2001 campaign focusing on scald and burn prevention received just a photograph in the Toronto Star, whereas the 2002 campaign received a lengthy story and large photo on the front page of a prominent section of the paper.

As the overriding objective in the campaign was to get parents to play an active role in keeping children on wheels safe, the campaign's success was measured not only by the quality and quantity of media coverage, but also by the level of success in changing parents'/caregivers' behaviours. Environics examined feedback from a follow-up phone survey commissioned by SKC of 250 parents who had heard or read about the campaign and 250 who had not been exposed to it. The results were compared to find outcomes that were statistically significant and directly attributable to the Safe Kids Week campaign. Parents who knew about the campaign were significantly more likely to have recently checked the fit of their children's helmets than parents who didn't know, and those exposed to the campaign were more likely to know that helmet size was important to proper fit.

To evaluate the success of positioning SKC as a national authority on childhood safety and reinforcing Johnson & Johnson's commitment to family safety, Environics looked at a number of statistics, one of which showed that 26.2 percent of all coverage mentioned Johnson & Johnson either verbally or visually.

The final measure of success was found in SKC's report on Safe Kids Week 2002: "This appears to have been the most successful Safe Kids Week campaign to date."

STATISTICS SUPPORT CAMPAIGN'S SUCCESS

Environics Communication Inc. used the following statistics to show the success of the weeklong safety campaign.

* A substantial number of Canadian parents (one in three) heard about the Safe Kids Week campaign, more than twice the exposure of the 2001 campaign (one in seven).

* Coverage was spread across various media as follows:

** Print: 122 clippings in 2002, up from 95 in 2001

** TV: 66 broadcasts in 2002, up from 49 in 2001

** Radio: 51 broadcasts in 2002, up from 26 in 2001

* The majority (74 percent) of parents who knew about the Safe Kids Week campaign were likely to have recently checked the fit of their children's helmets, whereas only 58 percent of parents who didn't know about the campaign were likely to have checked.

* Twelve percent of parents exposed to the campaign were likely to know that helmet size is important to proper fit, as opposed to just 4 percent of unexposed parents. (Although this number may seem low, it is statistically significant because this information was provided unprompted, rather than as a response to a list of options.)

Jennifer Schipper is a senior vice president and Tina Gladstone is a senior consultant it Environics Communications Inc., a North American public relations and public affairs agency with offices in Washington, D.C., Metro New York, Montreal and Toronto. They can be reached at [e-mail] and [e-mail].