RACV AND TAC JOIN FORCES TO LAUNCH INNOVATIVE BOOSTER SEAT INITIATIVE VIA CHE PROXIMITY
A new road safety initiative from two of Victoria’s most trusted brands, RACV and TAC, via CHE Proximity, Melbourne, has launched across Victoria aimed at reducing the existing confusion around booster seats. Focusing on when children can safely be moved out of a booster seat, the campaign re-frames booster seat safety in terms of height, not age, providing a simple and innovative solution – The Booster Tag.
The Booster Tag is an icon in the shape of a booster seat and is designed to sit alongside clothing care icons for t-shirts sized 4-11, which fit children under 145cm. The icon is a height indicator, so parents can quickly identify that their child should sit in a booster seat. Any child that fits a t-shirt with The Booster Tag is likely to still need a booster seat.
Says TAC Lead Director of Road Safety Samantha Cockfield: “It’s critical that all passengers are correctly restrained when travelling in a vehicle, especially children, who are among our most vulnerable road users. Booster seats reduce a child’s risk of injury and death in a car crash by providing side impact protection, and most importantly, protecting their heads.
“This campaign is about arming people with simple and clear information to help them protect their most precious cargo.”
Adds RACV Senior Policy Advisor – Safety, Elvira Lazar: “We hope to spark a movement that sees all children’s clothing manufacturers utilise The Booster Tag which in turn, can help to save children’s lives.
“Using age as a guide to move children out of a booster seat is no longer appropriate. All seven-year olds are different heights so it only makes sense that we highlight to parents that it is the height that they need to consider before evaluating if they should take their child out of a booster seat.
“That’s why, in partnership with TAC, we have created The Booster Tag. The tag helps clear the confusion for parents around whether their child should be in a booster seat – if a t-shirt carries The Booster Tag, the answer is yes.”
With Victorians now spending more time at home, RACV and TAC encouraged parents to take the time to measure their children’s height.
Once children reach 145cm, the Booster Tag prompts parents to do the seat-belt ready 5-step test, to check their children can achieve a good adult seatbelt fit and travel without a booster seat.
The Booster Tag is an open source sizing tag and icon designed to sit alongside clothing care instructions. It is available to download, for free, for all Victorian and Australian clothing manufacturers.
High-profile clothing brands Minti, Oobi and Littlehorn have all adopted The Booster Tag in their clothing ranges, with more clothing brands to be announced.
Half Moon Bay Surf Life Saving Club and Lumineer Academy in Victoria will both be supporting the initiative by adopting The Booster Tag in their uniforms and rash vests. Part of the campaign objectives will be to recruit further clothing companies, schools and sports clubs to adopt The Booster Tag and join the initiative.
Myer has also incorporated The Booster Tag message onto selected garments across its popular Milkshake range with exclusive swing tags.
The Booster Tag campaign aligns with the Victoria Government’s Toward Zero road safety strategy and action plan, which is a plan for a future where no one is killed or seriously injured on Victorian roads.
Limited-edition T-shirt range
To launch the new road safety initiative, RACV and TAC have created a limited-edition unisex fashion range consisting of eight t-shirts. The t-shirts will also utilise The Booster Tag and the range is suitable for children sized 4-11, with the largest size designed to fit children who are 145cm tall.
The collection features eight custom designs, with each size indicated with lines that reflect a growth chart which helps to reinforce the message. It will be available online at www.boostertag.com.au.
All profits from the limited-edition range will go to The Royal Children’s Hospital, helping children and their families affected by trauma.
For more details on the initiative or, to check if your kids have outgrown a booster seat by taking the 5 Step Test, please visit The Booster Tag website.
30 Comments
…that is still my question.
Silly, gimmicky rubbish that’s rendered even more pointless now that there will be no awards entries this year.
What a waste of time.
Is a “limited-edition unisex fashion range” created to win awards.
The bigger question is why release it now, in a time of isolation and economic austerity? Oh, that’s right, it needs to have run before a certain date to qualify for awards entries. And ‘limited-edition’ allows them to sell out making it a perfect case study for effectiveness.
If this tag was really about solving an issue rather than an agencies gain, then they should have waited until the world went back to normal. But instead, they tried to shoehorn it in “With Victorians now spending more time at home, RACV and TAC encouraged parents to take the time to measure their children’s height” rubbish.
Nice reminder that stays with the parents as long as the garment. Not many other PSAs get washed, folded and put away every week.
This smells like desperation. All the data hype for this? I find it weird when they’re the agency being talked about right now for letting go 40 people on zoom.
I’m not sure what’s funnier. Cynical, locked down creatives who will have no chance of producing anything for next year’s award season or the amateurs above who can’t see how great this. Hope you don’t work where I work.
Great ideas can’t just function well in a case study – they should be replicable and achievable in the real world. Kids clothes are produced EVERYWHERE – there is no way to ensure these tags will appear on all kids clothing, not even a large enough percentage of new kids clothes to ensure the idea “saves kids lives”, as the case study video claims. Clever solutions don’t precisely manufacture the conditions required for the idea to be able to work.
C’mon mate, they’ve thought of that one:
‘Part of the campaign objectives will be to recruit further clothing companies, schools and sports clubs to adopt The Booster Tag and join the initiative.’
So you think to do an idea like this every single kids clothing manufacturer needs to be on board? Avalanches build. Ideas like this have to start somewhere. Good on the CHEP crew for getting it started.
We all kinda know this is a sweet idea…but is really a bit impractical. Yes..parents want to know when their kids can leave the child seat behind. In theory when they turn 7. But if they are still small..common sense kicks in. Parents are silly. This idea is nanny stuff
.
A tag on a t-shirt is the least seen piece of media available. The fact they have spent so much time/money/effort is testament to the fact they’ve lost their way and only care for empty award style ads that add up to case studies and have no business impact. Do something worthwhile.
Well done to the Juniors who created this. Its a great effort for a first peace of work.
You don’t seem to understand the cynicism of creating a PSA purely to win awards, do you?
I’m glad I don’t work where you work, as you say. At least there’s an honesty in making ads for betting companies and alcohol brands.
Dear advertising industry,
I went for a run this morning and ran past a young kid wearing a shirt, ‘spread love, not germs’.
We’ve all seen similar sentiments of late and it reminded me of the strength of humanity and the hope it manifests in our communities. All around us people, industries and groups are coming together to help, support and nurture each other through this time. It’s not just covid, only a few months ago we came together to help bushfire ravished communities. In an incredible representation of the spirit of our industry, TBWA led an industry program to raise funds for the people of Gippsland. They raised $5m! Three weeks ago, we build a training app for Royal North Shore Hospital so their staff could learn the covid-19 care protocol. They have since shared it with hospitals around Australia, the UK and the US. It’s but a small contribution to the global fight. These are two tiny examples of the power of creativity being applied all around us for good.
And then it comes to Campaign Brief. This is the only forum we have in Australia where work in shared in forms big and small, good and only ok. Yet as an industry we’ve decided to make it more about hate, than the work.
The above comments in relation to our work are more no offensive than normal. In fact they have become a barometer on whether the work is any good. No negativity has become a proxy for average work – bizarrely. They don’t hurt the people they are probably intended for, myself, Ant and our senior leaders, but instead the young creatives, suits, planners and production people. The clients. Anyone outside the industry who happens to find this blog and stumbles across this time capsule of hate.
So why am I writing this? Plenty of people before me have tried and all have been shot down in a rage of anonymity.
I don’t believe the comments on this blog represents our industry. We are being characterised by a small few who delight in negativity, in hate, in tearing others down. These people post multiple times under different pseudonyms, their goal only to destroy the value of creativity, not uplift it.
My ask of these people is simple. In this moment of global reflection, is it finally time to act with humanity, with integrity, and most importantly optimism?
And for the rest of us who love our industry, who don’t want to be represented in this way, make a comment. Do it under your name. Be constructive. If you don’t like the work, that’s ok, just have the courage to own it.
Happy Easter everyone. Stay safe, look after one another and let’s look after our precious and valuable industry.
Chris
Clems. Now CHE.
I admired the great campaigns. I don’t respect this stuff. And this is mostly the stuff they do these days. It must be terrible to live up to.a reputation of days well and truly gone by. Undburden yourselves guys..have a few crappy award years. And build a better culture based on clients needs first rather than your own.
Pretty darn clever.
This and Mums Sauce are becoming just as prevalent issues as the negative comments for the youth of our industry.
If juniors in large agencies see whole departments working so hard And investing so much into scammy pieces of work like these, what kind of message does it send?
As senior creative leaders, perhaps you’re better off creating work that is worthy of praise rather than dressing up first thoughts to look like award winners.
I agree this is a negative corner of the industry, but I think some of it is valid and perhaps it’ll help keep us all in check of what’s worthwhile.
In regards to this tag idea. It feels like you’re creating a problem that doesn’t exist, parents just use google or common sense, and jamming it into a place that never gets looked at. Can’t remember the last time I took notice of a tag on a T-shirt.
Am I missing something here? 2 big clients, that’s fairly legitimate. A new message about height when it’s previously been about age, that’s cool. A message that stays with parents for as long as the t-shirt does, as someone else said – good too. Brands that are already using the tag. News reports you can find after doing a quick search. Yep, must be a total scam.
I agree with some of what you’re saying, Chris. Though I would say that truly good work seems to be immune to the anonymous negativity, even on this blog.
Go take a look at https://campaignbrief.com/optus-encourages-customers-to-donate-their-data-to-young-aussies-who-need-it-in-new-animated-spot-via-bear-meets-eagle-on-fire-sydney/
95% positive sentiment, because it was a nice idea well executed.
Unfortunately for CHE the agency is getting a reputation for exploiting lightweight thinking with case study style executions, and this group of cynical critics are quick to call it out.
Perhaps when your work has a true human insight at its core, not just something backed up by data, you’ll find work that can convince the industry to be nice.
Have a great Easter.
You’re being very presumptuous if you believe all of these comments come from outside the agency.
Removing 40 people via a zoom call.
Not apologising for this negative comment like everyone else. Every bit of this piece of work feels like it doesn’t need to exist. Is there really overwhelming data about the dangers of a kid being too big in a child seat? As if parents aren’t all over this anyway, we’ve been buckling our kids into seats for 6 years. And then revealing this “important” message on a limited run of kids t-shirts? That’s just laughable. May as well have hidden it in a tiny code that you could only find if you zoomed in with a smartphone camera.
Don’t protect it. Just do better.
I actually think this is very clever. As a parent I am certainly confused about all the various car seat rules, whats required when, when it’s safe to let kids go in the regular seatbellt etc – this is a really clever way and good media space to give a reminder, because let’s be honest i seem to spend hours and hours of my life laundering my kids clothes (sad but true) so I do notice clothing tags.
Well said.
And with respect, it’s ok to intelligently critique work. I don’t find many of these comments malicious at all. You may not like hearing your idea is average and ill-conceived, but it is.
What department of Chep do you work in?
This work is the latest in a long line of dubious awards-hungry output that on close inspection makes no sense.
“Rina” please. Your convoluted quote does not reflect the experience of all parents. I have three kids, and I never ever pay attention to the tags, when I buy clothes or when I chuck clothes into the wash. Try harder
Never defend your work on The Blog. It always ends badly and it smells weird. Put it out there and take what comes. If you love your work then rely on the clients and the people who buy their goods and services to love it even more. Shows confidence when you do that and that is what this crazy industry is all about. No matter what is happening in this F-up-ed world.
So I cut them off with careless abandon. I don’t think I’m alone. What really helps with the old booster seat height/age issue is the height chart I see everyday at their kinder and their school.
I think the idea is alright but lacks the partnerships to make it work.
Yes, not everyone looks at tags, but it is in effect free media that people can be educated to recognise over time. The problem with this campaign is, unlike mum’s sauce (which I wasn’t that big a fan of but seemed to do alright from what I read), it doesn’t have a big enough partner to make it work.
Mum’s sauce worked not because it was an amazing idea but because it was stocked at the 2nd biggest supermarket and had the support of Coles (meaning better shelf position, promotion, etc.). What this idea needed was to have a Big W or Kmart (where the majority of parents of young children across the country actually go to buy their kids clothes) to put it on all of their private label ranges and drive the message from the retailer (good for Kmart and good for the cause). Either way, this campaign has a net benefit (cost nothing and may save a few lives or at least prevent injuries to kids) which at the end of the day is all that should really matter, so let’s be positive about it.