Case Study: The creation and management of a database to distribute publicity materials for the THINK! Road Safety campaign

The Road Safety section of the Department for Transport (DfT) is concerned with disseminating information and publicity aimed at ensuring that people use the roads safely, whether driving, walking, cycling or using public transport. It masterminds a range of initiatives, details of which need to be communicated to a large number of industry bodies, the police and road safety professionals.

These initiatives are brought together under the heading: THINK! which is a year-round road safety banner for all campaigns, aiming to create a greater public awareness of all road safety issues. These campaigns are underpinned by a rolling programme of publicity on television, radio and posters and in the press and other media. Apart from the broadcast media, the campaigns are also rolled out at local level by police and local authority road safety officers as well as voluntary and private sector organisations.

ABC was commissioned to build a segmented mailing database of all these organisations, which the THINK! team uses for the regular THINK! Campaign Magazine distribution, and to notify details of impending campaigns and the availability of publicity materials. Campaigns cover issues as diverse as child car seats, horse sense, driver tiredness, mobile phone usage, speeding and drink-driving. Many of the mailing exercises that ABC undertakes on the department’s behalf will therefore inform recipients about a forthcoming campaign, and invite requests for leaflets, posters and other publicity related to it. Other exercises may take the form of bulletins, issued globally or selectively to targeted segments of the database, including variable quantity information where appropriate.

In commissioning this database, Richard Meakin observed: “ABC had undertaken some quality work for my team at another department and I knew that this database would therefore be properly constructed at the outset, professionally managed over time and that data selections would be fast and accurate. We have not been disappointed.”

The bottom line for this project was:

• to create the initial database from a varied collection of 15 in-house (DfT) lists, by amalgamating and de-duplicating these lists so as to end up with the best data for each data subject; subsequently to receive amendments direct from data subjects themselves (by e-mail, fax or Freepost), and from the department itself
• in addition to categorising each record in some meaningful way, the database needed to hold quantity information ie. how many sets of information each record needs to receive (eg. where they are acting as a ‘clearing house’ for a section, team or group of interested parties)
• to undertake mailshots for specific campaigns, including printing personalised letters, campaign information, samples or other materials, in colour where necessary, usually against tight deadlines

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