TSC Newsletter:SUVs and Traffic Safety- the ESUVEE campaign

A 10-foot tall, 16-foot long woolly mammoth-looking creature pulled into Turner Field in Atlanta, Georgia on April 8, 2005, for one reason: to educate 18 to 24-year-old males on the handling dangers of the sport utility vehicle.

Dubbed the “Esuvee,” and made by Asylum Visual Effects of London, the beast is part one of the newest and biggest public service ad campaigns intended to change driver behaviors: targeting young men and women statistically most likely to crash their SUVs in single-vehicle rollovers, a leading cause of traffic deaths for young SUV drivers.

The Esuvee campaign has drawn the ire of SUV enthusiasts, who are suspicious of its lawsuit-inspired origins, and SUV critics, who say it glamorizes the problem without getting to its root. Both say the Esuvee ad is a mammoth waste of money. These conflicting reactions highlight ongoing debates over advertising as a tool in altering driver behavior. Studies show that it can help, but to what extent is it helped along by other factors like publicity, news stories, policy changes, education and editorials? And if advertising campaigns alone don't change behavior, what does?

The reason that the Esuvee campaign is needed at all lies in the innate characteristics of the vehicle class. Since their inception in the 1940s as military-grade Jeeps, this vehicle class offered higher ground clearance for tackling the rugged terrain of battlefields. This type of vehicle was later marketed to governmental organizations with similar needs, like the various national park services in North America and Europe.

The first commercial SUVs were virtually identical to their all-terrain counterparts save for domestic accoutrements like softer suspensions and tires. The original design purpose combined with domestic alterations created a vehicle inherently unlike any other recreational vehicle. The high vantage point afforded a better view and feeling of power once only associated with commercial vehicles. But those feelings belied the dynamic weaknesses inherent in SUVs' design: they were twice as likely to flip and roll, according to Insurance Institute for Highway Safety data dating back to 1980.

This tendency to flip was downplayed in the multi-billion dollar multimedia advertising campaigns that introduced it to mass market America, and the SUV now comprises one-quarter of the vehicle fleet. Why that is of concern to safety advocates is that rollover crashes are especially deadly. While the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that only about three percent of crashes involve rollovers, they account for roughly a third of all vehicle fatalities, or more than 10,000 deaths a year.

In 2000 NHTSA reported that almost half of fatal SUV crashes involved rollovers, compared to only 15 percent in cars. Furthermore, a 2002 NHTSA study found that nearly half of SUV drivers who died in rollovers were under 30, and almost three-quarters of those who died were men. Despite the figures, surveys show that more than 40% of Americans think that they are safer in an SUV than in a regular car.

In 2000, in the wake of a series of well-publicized rollover fatalities involving passengers in Ford Explorers, the Attorneys General of the United States filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of the 50 states alleging that Ford's marketing practices misled consumers on how to drive, load, and maintain Ford Explorers. The lawsuit was settled in December of 2002 with Ford agreeing to pay $50.1 million, $27 million of it for a public service ad campaign.

Three advertising companies bid on the project in 2003, and the award went to British ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH). BBH’s idea included the large sport utility vehicle anthropomorphized into a woolly mammoth-style beast that would appear in a rodeo-like setting where various human riders would attempt to “master their SUV.” Concepts like checking tire pressure regularly, avoiding overloading of the vehicle, wearing seat belts, and avoiding speeding, as well as sudden maneuvers, would be taught through the rodeo schema.

“The client ended up picking us because we were, if not the only agency, one of agencies that wasn’t trying to present scare tactics,” Peter Rosch of BBH said in company statements.

The ads would eschew normal public service announcement morbidity—like second-hand smoking literally stopping hearts—for a cooler feel that avoids guilt in favor of the same machismo appeals that Ford uses to sell SUVs, Rosch stated.

“I think as a lot of parents know, lecturing teenagers can be difficult sometimes. But if you encourage them to master riding this kind of vehicle, or beast if you will, as the ad campaign emphasizes, it’s much easier to communicate that and much better received,” Esuvee spokesperson Charlie Crist said on Good Morning America.

“ESUVEE, the Campaign mascot, is designed to evoke the sentiments one holds when they think of an actual sport utility vehicle: exciting, durable and powerful, with subtle characteristics. ESUVEE's prominence on the web site and at SUV Safety Days like the one in Atlanta will reinforce the message, while providing an entertaining, accessible and non-threatening method of capturing and retaining the intended audience's attention,” says the media relation team for Esuvee.

BBH used some of the best computer graphics technology on the market coupled with powerful New York publicity agency Peppercom to realize the campaign for January 2005.

Framestore LLC London, a company specializing in computer graphics, gave the beast the gate of a tiger and added lifelike fur rendering through the advanced graphics program used most recently in the Harry Potter films. Four-wheel off road vehicles with specially colored flags were used as reference to digitally run packs of Esuvees through hilly areas and streams. Installing a human atop a bucking Esuvee required custom rigging a bucking bronco machine. The digital creatures were composited with the forest backgrounds of Calgary, Canada, as well as sound stage rodeo sets. Add the actors atop the beasts, and the product was ready for primetime.

The Esuvee ad campaign debuted in Central Park, New York, January 31, 2005 with Katie Couric on Good Morning America. The 11-month multimedia campaign includes advertising on 16,000 cinema screens in 2,000 theaters, plus print, billboards, broadcast and online spots, strategic events and initiatives like Esuvee Safety Days, which was the event at Turner Field on April 8. A campaign web site also provides information and tips on SUV risks and safety in answer to the question, “How do you ride?”

The SUV Owners of America (SUVOA), a group sponsored by a public relations firm whose clients include Ford, but which has no direct connection to the company, responded to the campaign with a parallel public relations campaign aimed at countering perceived negative publicity about SUVs.

“We strongly object to the campaign’s imagery,” said Ron DeFore, spokesman for SUVOA. “The menacing look, posture and sound of the Esuvee mascot beg the question: is the real intent to educate drivers or to demonize SUVs? How does characterizing SUVs as ‘beasts’ – the campaign’s own word – educate young male drivers about motor vehicle safety and motivate them to become better, safer drivers? If instead the subtle agenda is to encourage them to purchase smaller, inherently less safe vehicles, it would be a quantum step backward for safety.

“The best way to improve safety is not by demonizing a popular class of vehicles with an excellent safety record, but to clamp down more on impaired driving, excessive speed, aggressive driving, and to increase seat belt use. Instead, millions of dollars are being spent on a campaign to apparently poison the public mind about SUVs.”

Opposition groups think the Esuvee ad didn’t go far enough. “If they are going to inform the public, they should have informed them about which SUVs are least prone to rollover,” Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen told the New York Times in February of 2005.

"The Esuvee ads do indeed have such a shaky sense of purpose, as well as a much more muddled means of getting their almost insular message across,” says Bill Gibron in the online magazine, PopMatters. “While [the ad] looks great, relying on the latest technology to create kind of Jurassic Park of driving precautions, it doesn’t really say very much of merit.”

Also, neither side addresses the ability to determine if behavior changes occur because of PSAs or because of a host of other factors like news coverage, editorials, policy, enforcement and education.

“In the context of health education in particular, there is now an impressive body of literature from the United States, Europe and Australia, showing that most media campaigns [alone] have had little or no effect on behavior. As a result, there is growing skepticism … about the value of large-scale media campaigns, with a number of recent reviews suggesting that the effort and expense entailed are simply not justified,” the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology stated in October 1989.

“The University of California undertook a multimillion dollar advertising campaign aimed at increasing the level of knowledge and concern about the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption. The theme of the campaign was 'Winners quit while they are ahead' and advertisements suggested that moderation would bring compensations such as increase in self-esteem and greater peer approval. Relative to no treatment control groups, subjects in the mass media communities displayed some increased knowledge about the effects of alcohol, but once again there was no evidence of any attitudinal behavioral change despite three years of trying,” the journal reported.

“What most mass media drug campaigns have in common is the assumption that changes in behavior will follow attitudinal change, which in turn will follow accurate knowledge about, for example, regular or heavy drinking.”

It’s not very hard to see BBH is assuming that accurate knowledge about SUV performance will lead to attitude and hence behavioral change in categorically one of the most tough to influence demographics, the young male.

The Psychology of Addictive Behaviors reports in December of 2003 reports that efforts to reduce problem gambling behaviors in Midwest populations by public service ad campaign had negligible effect. Hundreds of randomly sampled people were polled before and after the ads ran.

“[T]he advertising campaign did not appear to have any significant impact overall. ... Of the post-campaign sample, 8.2 percent reported seeing the ad; among this subgroup, most said the ad increased their knowledge of problem gambling, yet only 1 person took action based on the ad, and liking of the ad was in moderate range.

"Moreover, the number of people who claimed to have seen or heard the ad slogan 'Play smart. Don’t bet more than you can lose' actually declined in the post-campaign sample: 182 of 800 at the beginning versus 170 at the end.

“In general, the literature on public health advertising campaigns in various addictions (smoking, alcohol, gambling) indicates … results have been mixed. Results have been found to vary on the basis of factors like the amount of expenditure, salience of positive imagery, level of sensation-seeking in the target population, degree of awareness of the advertising, and ethnic and racial differences,” the journal states.

“Sometimes PSAs can and do have an impact,” Gibron notes. “In the late 1960s the tobacco industry lost an important appeal of the FCC mandate known as the 'fairness doctrine' (a policy which stated that all controversial issues be given fair and balanced treatment). As a result, anti-smoking advocates bombarded the airwaves.”

With the help of a host of other cultural factors like taxes and bans, smoking dropped. “Eventually companies like RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris discovered that for every three cigarette advertisements they aired, there was one negative PSA offered. The actual smoking rate declined for the first time in decades,” Gibron notes.

PSAs are no magic bullet, but they do factor into net effects. As part of a regimen of interventions PSAs play their part. But in the case of SUVs, the PSA leads a rather paltry chrage. The broader media environment is swamped with SUV ads and few PSAs. Ford and other domestic automakers spent more than $300 advertising SUVs annually for every $1 spent in this 11-month, $27-million campaign.

If persuasion isn't likely to work, technical solutions to altering driver behavior offer a possible alternative, although they are still a long way from being realized on a day-to-day level. Already, black boxes that can monitor teen driving patterns and alert parents to risky maneuvers by cell phone are available. Electronic traction control is becoming more standard on vehicles, and the recent drop in SUV sales suggest that there may be a critical mass developing about the possible dangers of in-expert SUV handling. Given all those developments, rollover fatality rates will eventually fall, but how much can be attributed to $27 million in computer graphics imagery and a multimedia blitz will be a future researcher’s guess.

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