2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

21% of all road crashes in Canada are caused by tiredness. Despite the facts, many drivers still don’t take the risk seriously — thinking the road isn’t powerful enough to put them to sleep, or thinking the problem doesn’t affect them. The Canada Safety Council, a national, non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to safety, needed to spread awareness of just how easily the road can put anyone to sleep.

Canada is home to some of the longest roads in the world. And people routinely drive hundreds of kilometres (sometimes as much as 10-hours of driving) in one go to visit family or take a trip to another province. Because of their driving culture, many Canadians don’t take the road’s ability to put them to sleep seriously. This led to the creative idea to allow drivers to safely experience the road’s sleep-inducing effects for themselves by recording the sounds of some of Canada’s most monotonous and dangerous roads and turning them into highly-effective aural sleep aids (each lasting over 8 hours).

They focused on creating content for audio streaming platforms as their audience were already searching for sleep aids (which are seeing a surge in popularity on the audio channels they used).

The agency created custom tracks and custom advertising per province, so that listeners could be targeted with the relevant track for them at the exact moment they were trying to sleep, between 9pm-2am. This messaging was supported by safe driving tips both within the audio platforms as well as a microsite (where people can plan safe journeys).

The tracks are available by searching “CSC Sleep Tracks” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, or by visiting sleeptracks.ca and selecting your preferred province. The campaign ran with advertising on TV, Spotify, online video, and digital display, with owned channel support from Canada Safety Council at the same time. All media was targeted to only hit people at bedtime (9pm-2am), when they were most likely to need the sleep aid.

Their objective was to increase awareness of the dangers of drowsy driving. Although Canada Safety Council does not engage in brand tracking, they can use 2022 road safety campaigns as a benchmark and attribute reach and impressions to ensuring their message was heard. Website visits for Canada Safety Council’s drowsy driving pages increased 3,498% while in market, with the Sleep Tracks campaign itself resulting in a 208% increase in impressions from benchmark, with 1,494,937 digital impressions. With the campaign still in market, their message was listened to for 10,000+ hours in the first week, and counting.

Credits

Graham Lang, Chief Creative Officer, TAXI
James Sadler, Executive Creative Director, TAXI
Mike Houldsworth, Senior Copywriter, TAXI
Sam Bullis, Design Lead, TAXI
Georgia Inerfield, Art Director, TAXI
Sara Nguyen, Designer, TAXI
Mara Neil, Account Director, TAXI
Scott Polzen, Senior Producer, TAXI
Jackie Pearl, Managing Director, TAXI
Andrew Harris, Sound Engineer, Vapor Music
Kat Stewart, Senior Producer, Vapor Music
Kat Stewart, Voice Actor, Vapor Music
Alexandra Beals, Editor, TAXI
Maxime Boivin, Integrated Studio Director, TAXI
Sebastien Royer, Group Account Director, Mindshare
Audrey Lo, Associate Media Planning, Mindshare
Erminia De Pippo, Investment Manager, Mindshare