CAA Worst Roads

For 20 years, CAA’s Worst Roads Campaign has positively influenced change toward safer communities. This campaign is one of CAAs most popular and engaging advocacy initiatives, both from a media and public participation perspective. The campaign uses crowd-sourcing and grassroots activities to engage Ontarians and Manitobans to vocalize their community’s road infrastructure and safety needs. Yearly, drivers, cyclists, pedestrians and transit riders vote on roads they feel need improvement (potholes, congestion, poor road signs and safety concerns). Votes are then collected and shared back with government officials and the public as focus areas to improve infrastructure and increase safety for all.

Historically, the approach had been to feature literal visual cues for bad roads, predominantly potholes. Although effective in understanding what a bad road would look like, it was missing emotional relevancy. For the CAA Worst Roads 2023 Campaign, the Creative Services team wanted to take a fresh approach in showcasing the negative impacts on bad roads. The plan was to elicit a strong emotional response with visuals and messaging that would make viewers take note, and based on a visceral reaction, feel compelled to vote in a timely manner.

The chosen concept highlights the most common outcomes of bad roads in the moment they are taking place. The creative approach explores three main road users; pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists. Eliciting core memories in any type of road user. Capturing the anxiety-inducing impact of a bad road. The impactful and relatable scenarios put the human experience front and centre.

This creative approach resulted in 27% higher visitors to the voting portal at caaworstroads.com and the highest visitor count since 2019.
The campaign was featured as a case study for effective marketing by Toronto Marketing Hub, a community of marketing and Ad Professionals in Toronto.