Transport Accident Commission (TAC) has said its road safety sculpture, Graham, could tour beyond Victoria's borders, after receiving expressions of interests from other organisation in Australia and across the globe.
Graham, the sculpture depicting how humans could look if they evolved to survive road crashes, has attracted worldwide interest since its launch last month. In its first week the meetgraham.com.au website attracted more than 10.4 million page views, and picked up press in publication including the New York Times, the Washington Post and Al Jazeera.
TAC senior manager for road safety Samantha Cockfield told AdNews that while nothing had been confirmed, it had received a large amount of interest from other jurisdictions wanting to host the unusual conversation piece.
“We'll follow up with them and look at how we can work with them,” Cockfield says. “It makes sense once Victoria has had enough time to see Graham to allow him to tour. But we created Graham to be part of the Victorian conversation and that will be our priority.”
Until then, Graham has a packed schedule, on tour in Victoria until December. The sculpture started the first part of its tour, to Geelong, last week.
The campaign was created by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne and used the expertise of artist Patricia Piccinini, Royal Melbourne Hospital trauma surgeon Christian Kenfield and Monash University Accident Research Centre crash investigation expert Dr David Logan.
To promote the campaign, TAC relied heavily on PR and social media, with no media buy included as part of its initial push.
Cockfield says while she might not have expected the level of interest in Graham that the campaign has reached, she isn't surprised at all about its popularity.
“I've been working in road safety public education for about 20 years and in that time TAC has produced some really great stuff,” Cockfield says. “But there has only been two or three times where I've thought, this idea is so brilliant.”
“It's achieved so much attention because the idea was as good as we thought it was, and we knew other people would engage with this issue.”
It's not the first time a Victorian safety campaign has gained popularity beyond its state borders. In January this year Metro Trains' highly awarded Dumb Ways to Die campaign was licensed to Denver's public transport organisation, Regional Transportation District (RTD).
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