Aug. 13, 2019—SafeAirbags.com recently announced the launch of its national broadcast consumer awareness campaign. The campaign is part of ongoing efforts to reach over 41 million vehicle owners in America who have been affected by the Takata air bag recall.
Actor Morgan Freeman will appear in the campaign, and the scale of a mass media campaign with someone of his stature has not been used in the history of vehicle safety recalls.
Daily, consumers are bombarded with marketing materials and messages from hundreds of brands and organizations, so consumers often ignore messages due to the sheer volume of noise they hear, says Patrick A. Juneau, the settlement special administrator of the Takata air bag recall settlements.
Juneau was appointed by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida to administer the settlement agreements of several auto manufacturers. A significant portion of the population is ignoring repeated messages, Juneau noted.
"We are trying to cut through that noise and capture the attention of those affected in creative ways, and there is no voice more iconic or authoritative or trustworthy than Mr. Freeman’s," Juneau says.
Television and radio spots will run through the end of October, with continuous evaluations of its effectiveness. Television spots will run nationally, multiple times a day for three weeks in August, September and October. There will also be national radio ads.
"The efforts put forth by the manufacturers to try to alert people of the urgency of the recall and to get these air bags fixed has been herculean," Juneau says. "Yet more than 17 million unrepaired defective air bags remain on the road."
