The online Responsible Drivers Club
The online Responsible Drivers Club (www.klubdrivera.pl) was built on the foundations of a first recruitment drive that took place during face-to-face activities in pubs and bars in Poland. The objective of the Club is to build a community of responsible drivers who never drink and drive and can diffuse the message of the designated driver concept.
In 2012 the Polish Brewers switched activities to social media, setting up a Facebook group with the objective to create a real trend for designated driving, especially among young adults. Apart from ongoing activities (daily posts, discussions), educational contests have been prepared for the followers, such as one dedicated to traffic regulations and another to a communally created list of “10 rules for a responsible driver”. The group features unique and creative content including videos, graphics, virtual events and other contests with prizes to be won.
In 2013, activities included daily posting of subject-related links, pictures and polls, with an average two to four posts per day on safe driving, sober driving, associated campaigns, traffic regulations and news, with Facebook ad campaigns run once or twice per quarter, promoting particular posts. A “DrIver’s driving license” contest engaged 4,000 participants and 5,200 new followers through a task to challenge one’s Facebook friend to quickly and correctly answer three questions from the official driving license test, with prizes including car camcorders. A contest challenging fans to find, film and post road absurdities in Poland was supported by Beata Bublewicz MP, president of the Parliamentary Group for Road Safety.
In 2014, the campaign focused on the “I don’t drink and drive” message using fans’ videos, pictures, graphics and contests, with the fanpage focused over six months on promoting it and communicating progress. Since the end of 2014, activities on the Driver’s Club Facebook profile have been successfully continued with engagement of fans in discussions and contests as well as the number of new fans of the profile (which significantly exceeded former assumptions and is constantly growing) show increasing social awareness and endorsement for the idea of sober driving. The fan page of the Club had 1,700 followers by June 2012, grew to over 15,000 by end February 2013 (with 10% regularly involved in discussions and comments) and had nearly 30,000 fans by end 2015, far beyond the 10,000 fan target set at the start of the initiative, with the level of interactivity also far exceeding the objective originally set.
The Responsible Drivers Club profile on Facebook is the largest Polish community built around sober driving and the second largest on road safety. The Club was presented at a joint ETSC – Polish Motor Transport Institute (ITS) workshop in Warsaw in 2016. This was the fifth national workshop of the SMART project, a three-year partnership between The Brewers of Europe and the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC).
The campaign has become a wide coalition since 2014, with the Polish Breweries as a key founder and the State Police as a public partner. In 2016 the campaign was represented in street art: mural ads in major cities in Poland and digital influencers joined the action. “I never drink and drive” stickers were distributed among drivers, encouraging them to place it on the car windshield as sign of support for the idea of sober driving. Almost 100 organisations and institutions joined the public-private partnership build around the campaign. As a result 3.2 million stickers have been distributed since the launch of the campaign.