Road safety campaigns have been relying on emotional impact, fear or direct awareness for decades. Allianz Ireland wanted to explore another avenue: intervening in a daily habit associated with driving to try to modify behavior from experience and not from warning. The result was “Seat Belters”, an initiative developed together with the agency Forsman & Bodenfors and Spotify that now, a year after its launch, shares its first impact data.
If music influences people’s emotional state and physiological rhythm, it can also influence how they drive.
The campaign used the Spotify API to generate personalized playlists composed exclusively of songs with less than 80 beats per minute (BPM), a range that different research links to calmer driving, less stress behind the wheel and better reaction times. The idea was based on the premise that if music influences people’s emotional state and physiological rhythm, it can also influence how they drive.
According to data shared by Allianz, the campaign has already reached 134 million people in markets such as Ireland, Austria, Hungary, Australia and the United Kingdom. In addition, 66,827 users have created a personalized safe driving playlist to date, which translates into more than 5.4 million listening minutes associated with potentially more relaxed driving habits.
Among the songs of less than 80 BPM most used by users within the playlists generated by “Seat Belters” the following stand out:
- “Thinking Out Loud” and “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran
- “I Wanna Be Yours” by Arctic Monkeys
- “Someone Like You” by Adele
- “All of Me” by John Legend
- “Let Her Go” by Passenger
- “Lovely” by Billie Eilish and Khalid
- “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars
- “Fix You” by Coldplay
- “When The Party’s Over”, by Billie Eilish
- “Shallow”, by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper
- Say Something”, from A Great Big World
Music as an effective prevention element
Beyond the reach figures, Allianz now focuses on the type of interaction that the campaign generated. Compared to traditional road safety approaches, based on warning messages or emotional impact, “Seat Belters” sought to introduce a change in behavior through the active participation of the user. The strategic logic was supported by research on customer engagement and behavioral marketing, such as the meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Sciencewhich concludes that participatory and experiential initiatives generate a stronger cognitive, emotional and behavioral involvement than traditional communication.
In that sense, Allianz presented the campaign as a tool integrated into the daily driving routine. Having users voluntarily generate their own personalized playlists, share results or actively modify their listening habits was part of the goal. According to the company, this direct interaction turns music into a more effective prevention element than purely institutional or alarmist speeches.
The campaign was initially articulated through a social-first strategy and accumulated nearly 25 million views on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, in addition to more than 500,000 interactions on social platforms, according to brand data.
In creative terms, the initiative transferred the safety message to an unusual terrain for insurers: personalized entertainment. Instead of insisting on the negative consequences of reckless driving, Allianz chose to facilitate different behavior from the driving experience itself.
“In a world of constant distraction and time pressure, traditional road safety messages have to compete for attention like never before.”said Mark Brennan, Marketing Director at Allianz Ireland. “Rather than relying on warnings or shock tactics, the campaign removes friction from everyday driving. Combining personalization, entertainment and behavioral data, it turns music into an active safety tool.”
For Damian Hanley, Executive Creative Director of Forsman & Bodenfors, the approach arose precisely from observing the omnipresence of music in the driving experience. “Music accompanies every driver in every car in the world. We realized that it can be a good companion or a bad companion. So we wanted to turn it into a safety message that people could hear every day.”
Allianz assures that it continues to explore new ways to expand the project and continue working together with Spotify to develop safer driving habits. And the case highlights how brands are shifting part of their strategies from communication to behavioral design, especially in areas where utility, personalization and data allow them to intervene in everyday actions without necessarily resorting to the traditional advertising message.
