TACTowards Zero Round
- Campaign
- Activation
In the past the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) and the Australian Football League Victoria (AFLV) have used their 10-year sponsorship agreement to work with elite football players and help spread various messages. But with the road toll up a whopping 59% in July 2019, the TAC needed to shift focus from the elites and start a conversation in local, rural towns who were vastly over-represented.
Sadly every rural community has been affected by someone losing their lives on the roads, so we decided to empower these communities to lead and contextualise the conversation amongst themselves. To convey that everyone can help in achieving the TAC’s goal of zero deaths and serious injuries on the roads.
We went to the heart of every rural town; their local football club. We gave football club captains a message they could wear during the TAC Towards Zero Round. A new number that had never been worn on an Australian football field before: Zero. The only acceptable number of deaths on our roads.
To explain the significance of the new number we hosted and filmed two jersey presentations with a twist; they were held by community members who were directly affected by trauma on the roads. The jerseys were presented to the captains with the context of what the number meant to those intensely affected by the trauma of a road accident. Following this, we sent out the new jerseys to every football club in bespoke packaging that invited them to film their own presentations.
Before the round, almost every club had hosted and filmed their own jersey presentation, and communicated it on their social channels, educating their wider community on the cause. Every club became an ambassador for our message, and every captain wore it on their back.
The round saw over 1000 clubs wear zero, with over 1000 presentations held and 1000 conversations started. The presentations and meaning behind the number was publicised by over 200 media outlets, and telecast by every major news provider in the country, garnering a total of 46.6+ million impressions, predominantly built out of the user-generated content coming straight from the personal stories of the communities themselves. The round itself, and wearing of the zero jersey, was made an annual event reminding every community that even one death on our roads, is too many.
