#DriveNowTextLater campaign Qorus-NTT DATA Innovation in Insurance Awards 2026

Concept, Objectives and Reason behind

#DriveNowTextLater campaign was launched by Discovery Insure in April 2025. Discovery Insure is the P&C subsidiary of Discovery Limited, a company that has pioneered shared value insurance globally. Shared value insurance aligns the incentives of clients, insurers and society to improve the entire system at scale. At Discovery Insure this manifests through Vitality Drive which is a driver behaviour programme that uses telematics, behaviourial economics and incentives (such as discounts on fuel, tyres and car maintenance). A fundamental premise of the programme is that behvaiour drives risk. When clients improve their behaviour it leads to fewer claims which creates value that can be shared back with them. This also benefits society through safer roads. So the key behaviours of speeding, aggressive driving, cellphone use whilst driving, night time driving increase accident risk and contribute to over 60% of fatalities. We saw in our data (where have collected over a billion driving events in over a decade) that cellphone use whilst driving has overtaken speeding as the leading cause of accidents. So we decided to do something about it through this campaign. In South Africa, road safety is not seen as cool and enforcement tactics do not heed very positive results. So we wanted a campaign that could engage the public emotionally behind this important cause. We partnered with bp southern africa so that the public can pick up the thumb stickers at the bp fuel stations. The sticker was a physical reminder to not text and drive. If clients did not want to collect the sticker they could make a digital pledge on social media channels. This campaign was supported through innovative communication tactics across social media, traditional media in the form of billboards, influencers including former South African soccer team and Leeds United Captain Lucas Radebe and Former Miss South Africa, Joann Strauss amongst others. We also used our executive team to make pledges and share the message on LinkedIn. As a final incentive everyone who made a pledge was entered into a draw to win their share of a million rand. We also did a holiday draw to Maldives for customers who didn't use their phone for the period

Sources of inspiration and competition

There are many campaigns around the world that have focused on distracted driving but no insurer in South Africa has done so. Discovery Insure was uniquely positioned because of our purpose of 'Creating a nation of great drivers' plus the learnings we have gained with Vitality Drive over the past 15 years. A key differentiator for us was to frame the issue positively and drive positive behaviour change rather than fear.

Teams Involved and main results

The campaign was largely driven by the marketing team with assistance from the partner team, telematics and actuarial teams from a data perspective. We also had external agencies that focused particularly on social media and influencer marketing. We also worked with the teams from bp southern africa

The campaign ran over a 3 month period and the results were phenomenal with over 300 million impressions, over 537000 engagements on social media which are tantamount to pledges, 1 million thumb stickers delivered across 406 bp sites, a positive net sentiment of 97.5% and importantly we saw a 14% drop in cellphone use whilst driving amongst our clients