City of Toronto
The City of Toronto tasked us with changing motorists’ behaviours to keep those who cycle safe. Our solution? Showing our shared humanity.
Whether you’re a pedestrian, someone who cycles, or a motorist, we all have a duty to be aware and keep Toronto’s roads safe for everyone. This is especially true for motorists given the size and speed of their vehicles – a small mistake can have grave consequences. With new bike lane infrastructure changing the familiar landscape of our main downtown arteries, the adjustment to sharing the road with those who cycle has become a safety issue that needs to be addressed.
To do that, motorists need proper guidance to change their driving habits and ensure that everyone feels safe when sharing the road. The City of Toronto tasked us with creating a campaign to drive those changes forward.
Concerns about road safety are always front-of-mind and in the news, but our research provided deeper insights on the issue. We found that 60% of drivers believe that there is real tension between them and those who cycle, and that this tension is amplified by their emotional state. It turns out that when you’re tired, angry, or stressed during your commute, your thoughts stick to getting from point A to point B and not on the people around you. It became clear that an emotional approach was needed to make the behaviour changes required.
To help people share the road safely, we need to appeal to their shared humanity.
With these insights in hand, we got to work. Our campaign focused on three key actions motorists needed to take to keep those who cycle safe. However, we had to ensure that we were delivering this message in a way that targeted drivers without being accusatory and didn’t become weighed down in needless specificity with the behaviours that needed changing. We chose to keep the focus on reminding drivers that those who cycle are people too. “There’s a Life on Every Bike” would headline each piece with instructive sub-copy on the behaviour changes below. We had to be mindful to maintain a delicate balance that kept our target audience engaged without creating something that felt accusatory.
“When trying to change ingrained behaviours you have to make what’s at stake a reality for the viewer. Given that the messaging requirements for this project involved presenting detailed driving habit changes in a digestible way, we needed to ensure it had impact even at a passing (no pun intended) glance. Putting the shared humanity of Torontonians front and centre allowed us to accomplish this.” – Vini Dalvi CCO, Publicis Canada
The art direction is what made this project truly shine and communicate our message of shared humanity while also instilling the changes in driving behaviour we wanted to see. Working with illustrator Vivian Rosas, we integrated relatable personas like ‘Best Friend’, ‘Life Partner’ and ‘Caregiver’ into our visuals to show that there truly is a “Life on Every Bike”. This, along with a bright colour palette and characters representative of Toronto’s diversity, brought compassion and levity to a tough subject.
We all share the same road, and we all want to get home safely.