Safety - a hidden marketing tool?

Opinion

<< Back to contents page

Our research and experience around the world suggests there is a relationship between safety and marketing at two extremes...

Dr Will Murray

By Dr Will Murray, research director for Interactive Driving Systems (www.virtualrisk manager.net), which specialises in driver risk assessment, monitoring and improvement with a range of organisations around the world. He has more than 15 years experience in researching and improving transport safety, both in academia and industry

1. Have a major incident and your marketing/PR department will have to spend a great deal of effort on damage limitation to manage the 'crisis', suppress any bad publicity and protect your brand - not to mention having to minimise the costs, legal and operational consequences.

2. At the other extreme, imagine the benefits of winning a safety award, speaking at a major conference about your initiatives and being involved in the local community. This will give at least three opportunities to enhance your reputation, through your own media machine, media power of the awarding body and via the local community groups.

Tangible

We believe that there are tangible marketing benefits from good safety. Every fleet (and other) safety professional should spend time, getting to know and working closely, with the marketing/PR people in their organisation.

As well as external coverage, this can also benefit safety performance internally, as a large element of safety improvement work is about marketing and selling - persuading people to change the way they behave. So, working closely with, learning from and gaining the support of marketing people can also help to develop better internal marketing campaigns aimed at promoting safer driving.

Such programs are important for a number of reasons:

1. Society - using the road is the most dangerous activity most people undertake - and is the most likely way that people around Europe are likely to die between the ages of four and 44. Under 25s are particularly at risk, making up 10% of drivers, but being involved in 25% of fatal collisions.

2. Legally we all have a duty of care to follow the rules of the road, and ensure that we drive carefully, our vehicles are roadworthy, licensed, certified and insured.

3. For the business, it is important that you and your family remain fit and healthy - and avoid being involved in accidents. If you are off work due to your own or a family member's injury it has a major impact on company performance.

chart

4. From a financial point of view, road accidents involving you or other family members are very expensive. It has been estimated that in road accidents you are involved in at work the costs are shared, 40% by the employee, 30% by the employer and 30% by the community. In accidents at home, or involving family members, the costs are met totally by you and the community.

Safety can also help support marketing by allowing organisations to get involved in their local community.

As the graph (left) shows, many work related crashes happen close to home, meaning that fleet operators have a major impact on their local community, including their own employees and family members.

Our research and experience shows that there are clear links between fleet safety and other core business activities such as quality, efficiency, the environment, marketing and branding.

"Every fleet and other safety professional should spend time, getting to know and working closely, with the marketing/PR people in their organisation"

It also gives an opportunity to play a wider role in the community, be seen as proactive about corporate responsibilities to people and the planet, enhance brand reputation and help to protect against safety and other legal obligations.

An effectively run family and friends or community initiative as part of the wider fleet safety programme can motivate managers and staff to become 'change agents' who lead by example and also bring many potential marketing opportunities. Externally, employers have such a presence and brand that they could do much more to effect the communities in which they operate. Such initiatives could include:

Case studies of proactive organisations that have successfully followed this path can be found at www.virtualriskmanager.net

<< Back to contents page