I see that the Government is back using mind games (aka TV Ads) to try and change the social behaviour of the citizenry.
In fact, the latest ‘Department’ to decide that it is better to spend money buying ad space than on the problem itself is the one that you and I (as Kiwis who have more than a passing interest in roads, roading and getting around) should have some sort of feel or affinity for, the recent re-named and imaged, Waka Kotahi (aka The New Zealand Transport Agency.)
Yet, yet, the more I see of the ads which are part of the Agency’s response to the Government’s Road to Zero Road Safety Strategy Plan 2020-2030, the angrier I get.
Look, I definitely don’t want to die an agonising waste-of-a-life death in an ‘accident’ on our roads. So, I share the basic desire for us all to think a little bit more about safety when we are out there driving on our roads.
But 1) to actively promote an ideal scenario (zero road deaths) with a 40% reduction in the annual NZ death rate by 2030) is IMHO cloud cuckoo land stuff.
Then to 2) kick off a campaign of such seriousness with such a bizarre mix of TV ads (the first one I noticed used a ‘way- too-clever-for-its-own-good play on the word toll (as in road ‘toll’).
The second involves an opossum, some sort of weird post-modern family plus an ensemble cast of extras which looks like they came straight from a casting call for an upcoming episode of Wellington Paranormal (and no, that’s not meant to be a complement).
Because I like (to think, anyway), that I know what’s going on in my little corner of the world, I have been aware for some time of the current Labour Government’s plans to put together some sort of overall ‘master plan’ to finally ‘do something about’ our road toll.
In fact, with a very real passion for the subject of road safety and in particular, driver education, of his own, plus time on his hands thanks to NZ’s COVID-19 trans-Tasman travel ban I’ve been half expecting some sort of hook-up between Waka Kotahi and Greg Murphy.
Which would have made a hell of a lot of plain old common sense……………. had not current list Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter placed her own particularly woke stamp on things when – in her role as Associate Minister of Transport at the time – she showed her true colours by shamelessly plugging her own pro-cycling agenda in the original ‘Road to Zero’ strategy document published back in December 2019.
As it turns out we’re actually not doing as badly as some doom-sayers would have us believe,
Back in 1990, for instance, 730 Kiwis died and 17,732 were injured on our roads. Since then, however, these numbers have been trending steadily down – to a point in 2103 when there were just 253 fatalities and just 11,934 injured.
Sadly, since 2013 the numbers both of deaths and injuries has shot up again, (to a high of 378 & 14,039 in 2017 and 378/14,698 in 2018) though by 2020 the population had increased from 3.4 million in 1990 to 5.0 million in 2020, while the number of vehicles using our roads had risen from 1198 in 1990 to 4,435 in 2020.
So, you’re not really comparing apples with apples…
There is definitely room for more improvement though; I just wish that the Government could come up with a better way to ‘sell’ their ideas to the public. And not just because this sort of blatant misuse of yours’s and my hard-earned tax-payer dollars (and OK, that’s my ‘opinion,’ not necessarily a hard ‘fact’) has been largely discredited overseas,
Despite that, Government Departments here are still entrusting large amounts of money to whatever passes as an ad agency in Wellington these days in the vain hope that their particular message (Three Waters and the Zero Road Toll ‘initiative’ being but the latest in a long and inglorious line) will hopefully get through to the ‘audience’ it has been targeted at.
Never mind that the horse has long since bolted on the old-fashioned ‘one-size-fits-all’ campaigns so beloved of big-spending ‘sales companies’ like McDonalds, KFC, and Toyota.
These days successful ad campaigns have to be splintered, multi-faceted affairs, with each niche targeted by the ‘client’ spoken to in a slightly different way and more often than not via a different (i.e., social rather than traditional) media or rather, medium.
Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to the brave new world of political and social pluralism.
If – like me the other day – you are finally tiring of ‘all the bloody Briscoes’s ads’ popping up between videos on your supposedly private YouTube feed it might surprise you (it certainly did me) to find out that sitting down in front of a screen to catch up with a week or two’s worth of YouTube videos is now the single biggest way (particularly the younger, and hitherto harder to reach demographics) Kiwis consume their electronic news, information and opinions.
Not so long ago the order might have started – and no doubt finished – with placing your campaign ads in or around the network news bulletin on TV1 at 6.00pm each and every evening, or – when farmers still wielded a degree of power in cabinet – that once fine staple of Sunday night TV programming, Country Calendar,
They were obviously simpler times back then, Simpler, but obviously far deadlier on our roads too.
Next week. Why are many of our main roads still ‘shit,’ and why further reducing the speed limits on them might not necessarily be a bad thing!
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