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When Bristol City Council introduced a 20mph speed limit in built up areas they knew that it would be met with resistance from drivers. Using a “nudge” behavioural strategy in our planning we created a campaign that helped explain the reasons behind the move rather than just informing people of the new limits.

As well as the obvious safety aspect, a slower speed limit also reduces emissions and congestion. To fully understand which benefit the public found most compelling, we produced various campaign concepts to be used in a series of focus groups. We then took the findings of this research and honed the creative accordingly.

Pedestrian safety was seen as the most persuasive argument for the reduced speed limit, so we recreated some normal street scenes, swapping actual street signs for fictitious ones that spelled out the benefits to the public.  This was underpinned with the slogan “A little bit slower. A whole lot better.”

The campaign needed to be high profile, so Out Of Home was the obvious media choice, with the bulk of the campaign running across 48 sheets, bus backs and telephone kiosks. But we always like to look for new and interesting ways of reaching our target audience and for this campaign ambient media gave us the perfect tactical opportunity. What better way to get our message across than placing it on petrol pumps so people would be staring at it while filling up their cars.

We also produced a direct mail campaign, car stickers and vinyl banners for outside school gates, reminding people of the new speed limit in key areas of the city.