AT&T | It Can Wait
For the past eight years, AT&T has made it its mission to decrease the number of car accidents caused by texting and driving.
Just three years after the first iPhone came out, the perils of distracted driving were becoming more and more apparent, particularly the University of North Texas Health Science Center published a study in 2010 and found that there were more than 16,000 fatalities in the US from 2001–2007 caused by texting while driving. AT&T’s leadership decided to create and launch a campaign as a means of raising awareness of distracted driving, named ‘It Can Wait’ back in March of 2010. Specifically, ‘It Can Wait’ was initially focused on the company’s employees and their retail stores, but it quickly turned into a mass advertising campaign -print, radio, TV and online advertising.
Phase 1
The campaign’s first TV spots primarily targeted teenaged drivers by featuring real stories of people whose lives were ended or altered due to a text sent behind the wheel. The company’s aim, when it first launched its campaign, was to get as many young drivers to pledge not to text while behind the wheel, when the results of a survey made by the company revealed that 75% of teenaged drivers found it common to text when driving.
Phase 2
In 2013, the company partnered with the director Werner Herzog in order to create a documentary featuring families that were in one way or another affected by texting while behind the wheel. Specifically, the documentary featured both victims and culprits of distracted driving who have been involved in accidents. Αt AT&T’s initiative, this short documentary was distributed to more than 40,000 high schools in the US as well as to government officials, hundreds of safety organizations and the public as part of an educational awareness campaign.
Phase 3
Five years after the launch of ‘It Can Wait,’ AT&T decided to shift the focus of the campaign to not just texting but using social media as well, due to the fact that nowadays smartphones are being used for everything -from texting to replying to a comment on Instagram-. The brand -realising that smartphones became omnipresent not only for teens, but for people of all age groups- wanted to evolve the message so it would resonate with everyone.
In this film, it is not a reckless teen that causes the accident , but a mother behind the wheel who gets distracted by the likes and the comments on a picture she had uploaded on social media. A year later, on 2016, AT&T launched another public service announcement film featuring a dad who made the mistake of taking his eyes off the road for a moment and led to a irreversible outcome. Remember that “You are never alone on the road.”
Phase 4
The latest campaign - with the directions of Errol Morris- combines facts and fiction as it visualizes the appearance and the future that the victims of distracted driving could have.
More specifically, the short films star two young men, Caleb Sorohan and Forrest Cepeda. Two separateTV spots show them contemplating what would have happened and how would their lives be today — Cale remembers his dreams of becoming an athlete, even though he wasn’t good at sports, or maybe a sports trainer; Forrest wanted to become a creator of video games- but they reveal their fate on-screen.
Accidents not only affect the victims but the family members as well…
The Aftermath
Despite all the efforts over the years to reduce texting and driving, AT&T has struggled to restrict fatalities and injuries on the road, although 24 million people took the pledge that they will never drive distracted. The company didn’t limit its efforts to just TV spots but created a free app called DriveMode, that silences phone calls, texts and incoming alerts from social media so users can stay concentrated on driving, with 20 million downloads until now.
However, numbers from the US Department of Transportation show that deaths due to distracted driving were decreased only by 2,2% in recent years. Moreover, almost nine out of 10 people admit to using their phones behind the wheel, encouraging AT&T to keep spreading the message and raise awareness of the problem.
More info on AT&T:
AT&T Inc. is a premier communications holding company. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s fastest 3G network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet and voice services. It also offers advanced TV services and is known for its captainship in publishing, advertising sales and interactive local search applications. To learn more about AT&T, visit https://www.att.com/
Make sure to stay updated on https://www.itcanwait.com/home for new ‘It Can Wait’ spots.
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