Case film
The number of cars is expected to increase in Finland even faster than the number of people. At the same time, the EU has announced a goal for Europe to be the first climate-neutral continent in the world regarding traffic-related emissions. To meet this goal while the amount of cars in Finland is growing requires affecting the emissions the vehicles and drivers emit. As the Finnish car fleet is older, the average age of cars in Finland is 12,9 years. With that in mind meeting the EU's goal requires change faster, and simply waiting for electric vehicles to gain popularity is not possible, it means that a true behavior change is needed. Neste provides renewable diesel, but we also need to show how everyone can reduce emissions already today.
Challenge
We learned from earlier IRO research that almost 20% of Finnish drivers don't want to focus on climate-friendly driving when they are behind the wheel. This requires reaching them using ways more natural to them, such as music they listen to when driving.
Music tempo affects heart rate, and the more beats per minute (bpm) the music has, the higher the pulse. Research shows that when drivers listen to music with over 120 bpm, they are more likely to drive faster and make more traffic violations. Those listening to music with a faster tempo are likely to drive on average 10 mph faster. The optimal bpm for safe and steady driving which also reduces driving emissions, is below 90 bpm.
Insight
We created the playlists for busy routes and highways across Finland, with music chosen so that each song on the playlists would have on 60-80 bpm range. When entering a zone likely to induce their stress levels - a traffic jam or big intersection, a slower song was designed to start playing.
Located on Spotify, the playlists covered a wide range of genres from pop and rock to jazz, to ensure there was music for everyone's taste. To ensure local relevancy the playlists with catchy names were created for popular highways, such as Porvoo-Kotka Planet-Friendly Pop, featuring songs like Yellow from Coldplay.
Solution
Results
The campaign reached significant results for the relevant objectives by making climate-friendly driving easy and convenient for drivers. Both climate-friendly driving and the optimized playlists as a tool for it got significant coverage and awareness.
Climate-friendly driving was a consistent topic in earned media in Finland during the campaign period, with the biggest share of voice around climate-friendly driving and music. As a result, Neste and its spokespeople got to lead the conversation. With them controlling the narrative, they were able to shape the conversation truly and how the brand is seen - and do something unexpected for an energy company.
