Case Study: How a tiny town called Speed nestled in rural Victoria changed its name to Speedkills when the town received enough likes on Facebook

Last summer the Transport Accident Commission and Naked Communications launched the ‘Speedkills’ campaign. A campaign designed to tackle rural speeding by taking a novel approach.

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Rural speeding is a major issue in Australia. Showing shocking images of its consequences is just one approach to combating the problem, but agency Naked Communications explored another.

They found a town in rural Australia called Speed and engaged the townsfolk (all 45 of them) to use their town’s quirky name to make speeding socially unacceptable.

Speed agreed to change its name and town sign to SpeedKills if enough people supported the idea on Facebook.

The target of Facebook ‘likes’ was achieved and the town revealed its new name and sign to the world’s media. The sign became Australia’s most famous piece of outdoor media, being featured on millions of dollars of earned media.

A week later the sign was stolen, creating another wave of PR exposure.

And finally, Google Maps and the Victorian Geo registrar recorded the town’s name change too.

The campaign was well recognized in Australia and abroad, picking up some awards along the way including B&T’s Best PR campaign of the year, a Gold Spike, a Gold, Silver, Bronze ADMA and the David Ogilvy Pinnacle Award for Creative campaign of the year.

The campaign is currently shortlisted for AIMIA’s Best use of Social Media, AIMIA’s Best use of Video and One Show Interactive – Best Social Media Campaign.