Drunk driving has been proved to be one of the major causes of road accidents consuming thousands of lives. Driving under the influence of alcohol makes many people fail to obey the traffic rules accordingly or even fail to see the road signs at all. The large numbers of deaths resulting from drunk driving indicate the seriousness of the problem to society. However, despite the seriousness of the problem, there exists viable marketing solutions for Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW (RTA) that when implemented could result in lower frequency of alcohol-related accidents (Kubacki et al., 2015).
According to the research data above, the features of RTA’s target audience should be mostly men, who lived in a rural area, between 25 to 40 ages, may have a divorce issue, or people who families are split. The problem of driving under the influence of alcohol is closely related to all Drivers. Not only limited to the target audience. And also, it should be for people who are preparing to get a driver’s license in the future. So in order to reduce drink-driving, it is better for RTA to develop a series of advertising that circulates on TV or radio broadcasting. This media promotion can influence positive behavioral changes among the targeted audiences. It is an efficient tool for educating people about the risks associated with drinking and driving (Lee & Kotler, 2015).
When RTA creating an attention-grabbing advertisement, it requires knowledge in marketing or advertising, the development of specific objectives, communication of the message, stipulating a timeframe for implementation as well as an approach for evaluating this initiative (Who.int, 2007). In most cases, mass media campaigns have high social relevance to the targeted population. Individuals need to be persuaded for them to positively change their attitude of the behavioral component in such as drink driving is concerned. Persuasive public education through the use of media campaigns is one effective way of addressing such kind of issues since it is designed to reinforce the road safety advocacy so that the desired goal can be achieved among the targeted population. In carrying out such a media campaigns, the media is strongly used and marketing principles are also utilized (Kubacki et al., 2015).
Based on the theory of Elaboration likelihood model (ELM), (PPT) When RTA decided to create a series of ad, the final goal for RTA should be to influence cognitively based attitudes of the target audience successfully. People with a high or low effort should adopt completely different marketing strategies. Based on the target audience and most drivers in NSW, it is better for RTA to develop a credible communication source and strong arguments in the ads. Because they should consider that some drivers who have suffered accidents are not the first time for drunk driving. But after getting through many times of drunk driving, they became more and more careless and eventually, accidentally involved in an accident. This kind of target audience can be regarded as the audience who have a high effort on this problem. For them, they always leave the accident to chance and feel confident when they drive under alcohol. In this situation, RTA should consider central-route processing. For example, RTA can design an ad based on a real event and includes a narrator who has experienced a drunk driving accident but was eventually successfully rescued. And when we want to influence cognitively based attitudes when the effort is low, follow peripheral-route to persuasion. For example, designed advertising with a clear and straightforward message which can be impressive and easy for people to remember. And it is the key that RTA should repeat the advertising over and over in a period on TV or radio broadcasting, in order to let people keep in mind the seriousness of drunk driving. Moreover, use an emotional appeal of fear in the ad to create anxiety is also a way to make people remember the message. Besides, RTA should also develop ads with an emotional appeal of love in order to improve the sense of self-caring of the target audience. It can be a very different ad compare with the fear one, which intended to attract their interest and their attitudes become more positive toward the ad. Generally speaking, the goal for the series of ads is to raise customers’ awareness and improve attitude so that they truly realize the harmfulness of drunk driving behavior (Huang & Preston, 2004).