drug driving social marketing programme advice

In 2013, we worked with the New Zealand Drug Foundation and our friends at Curative to develop a social marketing plan to reduce drug related driving harm.

The NZ Drug Foundation and Curative are now putting this plan into action — they launched Steer Clear at outdoor music and arts festival Splore in February 2014. Steer Clear aims to help young people understand the risks associated with driving stoned, and encourages them to find safe alternatives.

Action and Impact

The innovate change team are continuing to support this work by offering advice on the validation and evaluation of the social marketing programme. We provide best practice and strategic advice on social marketing and behaviour change. We gather feedback from, and test insights with, young people in the target audience and professionals who work with young people. A key aspect of this has been recruiting a team of 16 young people connected to the target audience. This is the Steer Clear Development Crew – a group of creative, bright young people who are employed to co-design and communicate components of the programme.

We're also supporting the NZ Drug Foundation and Curative to implement the evaluation framework we developed, which includes collecting rigorous baseline data and process evaluation over the course of the programme. This will make it possible to understand the extent of behaviour change. Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate that Steer Clear has resulted in increasing numbers of young people stopping their friends from driving following cannabis use and of young people choosing not to drive following cannabis use.

Try it for yourself: click the image above to see how cannabis affects the way you perform behind the wheel.