ICICI Lombard Takes The Social Media Route For Road To Safety Campaign

ICICI Lombard GIC, the largest private sector general insurance company in India, has embarked upon a creative social awareness route through social media. The insurance brand – a leading player in the motor insurance segment – takes forth its ‘Drive Home Safe’ initiative with a unique experiment captured on a YouTube video and a Facebook app urging on the importance of seatbelts and more, in the hope to awaken the young and social savvy to responsible driving.

Experimental demonstrations

Cops vs. Conscience is a social experiment to analyse road behaviour in terms of traffic rules being violated in the absence of a traffic cop. Shot in traffic heavy junctions in Mumbai with the help of secret cameras, the video shows how motorists in general display a lack of road sense and how things change in the presence of a cop leading to the following of traffic rules and a safer road.

In another video, a hidden camera is installed in Vijay’s car with the help of his wife. After many traffic rule violations, Vijay is requested to watch his own actions that were being captured by the camera the whole time. The cop experiments have been made available on a Facebook app on the ICICI Lombard page.

The experiments tend to awaken our collective conscience towards responsible driving, rather than sharing the importance of safe driving practices.

Belt up India

With ‘Belt up India’, ICICI Lombard created a virtual seatbelt that covers India through a Facebook app. Spanning the breadth of the country from East to West of 2933 kms, the Facebook app enabled fans to take the pledge to wear a seatbelt always, and with each of these pledges the virtual belt would keep expanding to cover the country. The initiative aimed to reach 10K pledges to cover India thrice over, has already achieved this target.

Apart from sharing regular updates on the Facebook wall, ICICI Lombard has also leveraged the 140-character social network – Twitter. With road safety quizzes and contests around the videos, the Twitter handle has managed to garner reach and visibility. Hashtags #RoadToSafety and #BeltUpIndia were employed to spread the message on the experimental video and seatbelt pledge.

How effective is the campaign?

It is tough to instil a sense of road discipline in motorists. For one consciously-responsible driver, there will be at least 9 others who need the traffic cops to keep them at bay. With the number of road accidents on the rise, it makes great business sense for a motor insurance company to inculcate safe driving behaviour among the public.

Also, the choice of medium – YouTube, Facebook and Twitter – to drive the different pieces of the message in an integrated manner, has also been well executed. The social experiments do manage to drive home the message of following traffic rules for a safer country, however the challenge for ICICI Lombard lies in taking it forward. The brand has been emphasizing on ‘Drive home safe’ on the social media platforms, and would need more innovations to derive meaning, than pledges and contests.

Nevertheless, the insurance brand does manage to connect with young people through its innovative use of YouTube for spreading a social message. What do you think?

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/social-media/icici-lombard-takes-social-media-route-road-safety-campaign-0602779?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=icici-lombard-takes-social-media-route-road-safety-campaign