Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service – #INeedMySpace driving education campaign

Public sector communications excellence awards – silver winner. With incidents of poor parking and driving impacting on the ease with which fire crews could respond to 999 calls Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service decided to take decisive action. James Morton, External Communications Manager for Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, explains how they created the #INeedMySpace campaign to change behaviours for the better. 

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The challenge

Our firefighters had reported a sharp increase in the number of delays that they were experiencing in attending 999 emergency calls due to inconsiderate or dangerous parking. They were concerned that difficulties getting past parked vehicles could potentially mean the difference between life and death, so there was an urgent need to find an effective way of making residents more aware of the need to park safely and sensibly and change their behaviours.

The solution

We decided to develop a targeted campaign aimed at motorists across Hampshire. We knew that sharing visual examples of poor parking and driving would be a far more effective way of making our point than explaining it in words alone, so we began by collating CCTV footage and photos that demonstrated where people had created obstructions. We also engaged our frontline firefighters by encouraging them to share the examples of dangerous parking they came across when out in the community, enabling us to involve them in the campaign and collate a large number of current images that could help us to tell our story.

Although we maximised the value of a range of communication channels we decided to focus our campaign efforts on digital channels, in particular Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We used the images we had collated as our creative and developed a hashtag, #INeedMySpace as the campaign strapline. We used humour within the images and messages to encourage people to share the content online and engage with the campaign, rather than feel that they were being told off by it. We wanted people to think about their behaviour and change it, rather than feel that the fire service was pointing the finger of blame. We also designed a simple pneumonic to help people remember how they should react to blue light vehicles. This was CAR – Calm, Alert and Response.

We supplemented our online activity with promotional content in traditional local and trade press and also worked closely with local and national blue light partners and road safety charities to help spread the campaign message to their audiences.

The impact

The campaign officially ran between October and December and we recorded significant social media engagement during this time. Our online content was viewed more than 50,000 times and our Facebook reach was well in excess of 1 million, a figure which broke all of our previous records and was particularly positive given that the entire population of Hampshire is just 1.76 million. The campaign was also adopted by other partners across the fire service, transforming it into a national brand with a hashtag that could be used by all organisations to highlight bad driving or parking that inhibits blue light vehicles.

There was also several practical changes. Following the campaign the council began repainting the yellow hatched areas outside fire stations and marked up new ‘keep clear zones’. Our local neighbourhood policing teams also increased their monitoring of parking outside fire stations that have experienced particular problems with dangerous or inconsiderate parking. Importantly, our fire crews have also reported a noticeable reduction in incidents of vehicles being blocked, and report a greater level of confidence in challenging people who have impeded them by parking or driving badly.

Why it worked / how we’re sustaining it

Although the campaign officially ran for just eight weeks our crews are continuing to address incidents of poor parking. The hashtag has also been sustained as a result of becoming a national campaign slogan meaning that the message behind the campaign continues.

Using impactful visuals and developing a tone of voice that was educational rather that critical was key to the success of this campaign. A focus on engaging, shareable content helped us to reach a wider range of people as our communities actively shared the content with their friends and connections and developing a simple slogan and pneumonic helped people to quickly remember what they needed to do. Involving our fire crews in collating examples was also a very important part of this campaign’s success. They are the people directly dealing with these incidents so they were a vital part of gathering evidence that supported our messaging.

Lessons learned

The campaign’s success caught us slightly off-guard, as crews and the public clamoured to get more involved. We quickly had to produce physical materials (flyers, banners) so people could promote and educate in their local area.

Want to know more?

For more information please contact James Morton, External Communication Manager at Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service.