Outlines ICBC's 6-week campaign to create awareness of the facts behind pedestrian crashes, which surpassed all targets, including: mentions by 11.8%, engagement by 211.2%; and page visits by 199.7%.

1. Pedestrian Safety Campaign
Entrant: Tracy Bains and Team ICBC
Division 2, Category 17: Advertising campaigns
Client organization Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC)
Time period October 21 – December 1, 2014
Brief description A digital advertising campaign to raise awareness of pedestrian safety that resulted in the highest
reach and engagement of any previous digital campaign due to the strategic use of social
advertising, which allowed ICBC to be nimble and optimize the campaign while in flight.
1. Business need and opportunity
The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) is a provincial Crown corporation—an agency of the provincial government—
that provides universal auto insurance to B.C. motorists. We’re also responsible for driver licensing, vehicle licensing and
registration, and working with communities and organizations, such as the police, to promote road safety.
ICBC has a responsibility to provide our customers with the best insurance coverage for the lowest possible cost. To do this, we must
adapt to the changes that face all property and casualty insurance companies, including continuing to respond to increasing bodily
injury claims costs.
Claims costs of approximately $3 billion in 2013 make up most of the costs incurred by ICBC. Approximately 87 cents of every
premium dollar collected goes to pay claims and claims-related costs (Source: Annual Report). These costs remain the most
significant source of pressure on our rates for mandatory basic insurance.
Since pedestrians sustain more serious injuries in a crash due to their lack of protection, these claims typically cost more than other
injury claims. Fewer crashes and injuries involving pedestrians mean lower claims costs, which in turn help to keep insurance rates
as low as possible. Nearly one in five people killed in car crashes across B.C. are pedestrians so whether you’re driving, walking or
taking transit, we can all do our part to share the road safely.
Consequently, we saw an opportunity to launch a brand new education campaign to help keep pedestrians safe in the fall and winter
when crashes involving pedestrians increase significantly. On average, 76 per cent more pedestrians are injured in crashes from
November to January every year when conditions are dark and weather is poor compared to June to August in B.C. (Source: ICBC
and police data collected from 2009-2013).
The campaign included print advertising featured on trains and in buses across B.C. to reach pedestrians on transit. However, these
ads didn’t reach drivers effectively—and, after all, they represent half the equation when addressing pedestrian safety.
To complement this traditional effort, our team launched a 6-week digital advertising campaign targeting pedestrians and drivers,
highlighting both how pedestrians can stay safe and a driver’s responsibility behind the wheel.
2. Audience/stakeholder analysis
On average, 2,400 pedestrians are injured and 58 are killed in crashes every year in B.C. The primary audience for this digital
marketing campaign was pedestrians in B.C., particularly young people (16-25) as they represent the highest number of
pedestrians injured in crashes.
Our crash data is gathered from reports made to ICBC by insured registered vehicle owners, drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. Police
crash data is gathered from reports completed by police or submitted by individuals to police. Annually, we mine both datasets in
order to report insights to the public about crashes, injured and fatal victims, auto crime and vehicle and driver populations (Source:
http://www.icbc.com/about-icbc/newsroom/Documents/quick-statistics.pdf).
Young adults are active social media users: a 2013 Insights West survey regarding B.C.’s social media habits and preferences
revealed that Facebook is the clear champion among those aged 18-29 with 76% using it daily; second runner-up Twitter had 24%
of this group returning daily (Source: http://www.6smarketing.com/blog/bc-social-media-stats/). While the survey’s demographics
don’t map exactly to our audience, it’s safe to assume that our younger target will be even further engaged with social channels.
We also considered newer social networks like Instagram, Vine and SnapChat that typically skew to a younger audience. However,
advertising was either not possible or open to only a small group of their partners at the time of our campaign so we were not able
to test these channels. While we could advertise on Reddit, we decided not to since the site did not feature enough subreddits (or
forums) related to B.C. or Vancouver to make the investment worthwhile.

2. Our secondary target audience was drivers in B.C. since they must be extra vigilant for pedestrians as daylight hours decrease and
weather conditions worsen, particularly at intersections and around transit locations. We also rationalized that we could reach daily
commuters driving to and from work through geo-targeted content on LinkedIn, a social network dedicated to professionals.
3. Goals and objectives
Our primary goal was to increase awareness of how pedestrians and drivers can avoid crashes. As a result, the first objective was to
drive broad reach followed by our second objective to invite engagement with our messages.
Targets were set in part using the results of the most recent ICBC campaign on distracted driving as a benchmark. The distracted
driving campaign enjoyed a much higher budget of $500,000 overall and therefore featured advertising across TV, radio, print and
online—allocating $6,500 on boosting a single Facebook post—as well as a longer campaign period (8 weeks vs. the 6-week
pedestrian safety campaign). However, the targets for the pedestrian safety campaign were set higher because we were trying to
reach a larger audience: pedestrians and drivers.
Goal Objective Target Benchmark
(Distracted Driving)
Increase awareness
of pedestrian safety
Reach
Campaign mentions on social media and online news 1000 857
Impressions (social media and ad impressions on social
media and news)
4 million 1.6 million
Engagement
Engagement level (total times social media users engaged
with the campaign content, e.g. likes, shares, retweets)
5000 2000
Visits to campaign pages on icbc.com 2000 1600
4. Solution overview
In the past, ICBC has made tentative steps to integrate digital advertising (particularly on social media) into campaigns, largely
preferring more traditional methods like TV and radio, as well as pay-per-click search advertising. However, a small budget for our
first-ever pedestrian education campaign led decision makers to take a second look and invite the digital team to make a proposal.
Our strategy was to combine paid media on social networks popular with the target audiences and ads served on relevant
websites through Google’s display network to drive traffic back to owned media (icbc.com) where more facts and tips about
pedestrian safety were posted, educating and encouraging website visitors to change behaviours. We leveraged:
• Owned media: An infographic summarizing key facts about crashes involving pedestrians was placed on the website and
supported with additional tips for both pedestrians and drivers. Given that statistics are typically just listed as text in other
campaigns, this tactic was more likely to engage audiences and invite interaction.
• Paid media: Ads and posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as banner advertising through Google’s display
network sent visitors to the website. We used smaller sections of the infographic in our posts to lend visual appeal and act
as “teasers” that users could click through to get to more detailed information once on the site.
Complementing the broader education campaign, the key message was still to urge pedestrians to “look, listen and be seen.” A
second key message called on drivers to watch and yield for pedestrians; after launch, we tried to emphasize this more strongly (see
Implementation and challenges section).
Targeting tactics
We used a number of targeting tactics to get the most value from the campaign:
• Remarketing
Remarketing lets you show ads to people who have already visited your website or used your mobile app. When people
leave your website, for example, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads as they browse the
web, use mobile apps, or as they search on Google. By using the remarketing feature available in Google display advertising,
we tracked visitors on our driver-related web pages and targeted them later when they browsed the Internet.

3. • Topic Targeting
We used topic targeting available in Google’s display network to show pedestrian safety ads on relevant websites
frequented by drivers. We chose topics such as Car Rental & Taxi Services, Autos & Vehicles, and Carpooling & Vehicle
Sharing to place ads on appropriate sites, such as a website serving Vancouver Island that lists cars for sale.
• Interest Targeting
Twitter was a key platform for us, but it didn’t offer the sophisticated targeting methods above. Consequently, we used
Interest Targeting to serve our tweets to followers of specific users. We identified Twitter accounts popular among drivers,
e.g. @News1130Traffic (regional traffic news account) in order to reach our relevant target audience by affinity.
• Demographic and Geographical Targeting
There were many events associated with the campaign and our communications team was posting live in real-time to
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We used demographic and geographical targeting to expose the event to a bigger, relevant
audience by selectively pushing paid posts to users aged 16-25 located within 25 miles of these events.
We optimized the campaign while in flight in order to use the highest performing creative; for example, we tested two versions of
the same creative on Twitter and the one that achieved a higher click-through rate was then served up more. All of these targeting
tactics helped us reach niche audiences and increase relevancy of our message, which ultimately helped mitigate negativity and
ensure quality engagement.
5. Implementation and challenges
Implementation of the digital advertising campaign was managed entirely in-house, which helped convince decision makers to
approve the proposal because it was far more cost-effective to use staff resources than contract an agency. Our digital analytics
specialist crafted the strategy in close consultation with senior digital marketers, and managed the day-to-day execution. All creative
was completed by one designer. The text written for the website as well as each of the social media channels was a cross-
collaboration between one digital writer and one senior communications specialist who also directed the implementation of the
broader education campaign, ensuring alignment.
Another key to gaining approval was a comprehensive risk mitigation strategy that outlined tactics like frequency caps to avoid over-
exposure to ads, as well as a mid-point progress report that built confidence in the approach by highlighting early successes.
Once approved, the $10,000 budget was divided so that the most money ($4,500) was allocated to websites where we believed we
could best reach drivers, followed in descending order by audience penetration or adoption of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Figure 1 Estimated Budget from Proposal
Before and during implementation, we faced three challenges: (1) a technical hurdle, (2) uneven “weighting” of messages to
pedestrians vs. drivers, and (3) organizational reservations regarding digital advertising.
First, we had never taken advantage of Remarketing before so we needed to update icbc.com to install special coding to enable this
feature. The deadline for the campaign launch was approaching and the official window to make technical changes to the site had
passed. However, we successfully petitioned for a special iteration to load the necessary code with the support of IT colleagues
who recognized how the campaign contributed to ICBC’s corporate priorities to keep pedestrians safe.
Second, the majority of customer interactions during the first week erroneously criticized ICBC for solely speaking to pedestrians
rather than addressing safe practices for drivers, resulting in negative sentiments of 1%. The perception was that we were “victim
blaming” rather than addressing the causes of crashes.

4. We responded immediately to our audience by making changes to increase emphasis on drivers on the campaign web page and
social media, better equalizing the focus on both targets and tying back to our campaign goal of raising awareness.
The changes were received positively by social media users:
Third, we struggled initially to reassure colleagues that the ability to make course corrections to our digital advertising wasn’t a
failure in the strategy, but a unique advantage of digital. Our typical, pre-planned campaigns utilized print or broadcast media, which
can’t be altered without significant effort and money—and only to correct a critical error. However, we did some quick, informal
education to overcome concerns and reinforce the advantages of using digital to make continuous campaign improvements.
6. Measurement and evaluation
The campaign used a combination of low-cost social media and Google display advertising to maximize user reach and engagement,
successfully generating over 7.3 million social media impressions—the highest reach and engagement of all ICBC social media
campaigns to date.
In addition, the quality of engagement was much higher than the previous distracted driving campaign. The distracted driving
campaign’s single “boosted” Facebook post had over 80 comments within a week, however 80% of them were negative. In
comparison, the pedestrian safety campaign was controlled through frequency caps that limited an individual’s total exposure to the
content and targeted to specific audiences (by geography, age, interest), which helped mitigate negative sentiment towards ICBC
and the campaign. This resulted in approximately 5% negative comments, an excellent result compared to previous campaigns.
We surpassed all our key targets as demonstrated by the summary table below. The digital team has already been approached with
requests to integrate digital advertising into future awareness campaigns in 2015.
Goal Objective Target Actual (% achieved)
Increase
awareness of
pedestrian
safety
Reach
Campaign mentions on social media and online news 1000 1118 111.8%
Impressions (social media and ad impressions on social
media and news)
4 million 7.3 million 182.5%
Engagement
Engagement level (total times social media users engaged
with the campaign content e.g. likes, shares, retweets)
5000 15,562 311.2%
Visits to campaign pages on icbc.com 2000 5995 314.4%