Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
The campaign “Want to change places?”, which the Split agency Vajt conducted with public utility company Split Parking, has won the prestigious Polaris Award from the European Association of Political Consultants (EAPC). The campaign’s aim was to make drivers aware of the importance of respecting the designated parking places for people with disabilities, and won in a world-wide competition as the best in Public Affairs category.
The award was presented at the gala ceremony in the capital of Greece, Athens, and comes only two months after the same campaign was awarded the Grand Prix of the Croatian Public Relations Association (HUOJ), which was the fourth most prestigious domestic professional award for this Split agency in just five years.
The campaign was conducted by a team of young consultants from Vajt – Dora Čolaković, Antonela Vukorepa and Marin Babarović, designer Stjepko Rošin, creative agency of Milan Latković which produced the video, and all led by Vajt CEO Jerko Trogrlić. Of course, the trust that Split Parking showed the agency, and their strong engagement on the project, certainly contributed to this success.
“This is the first international award for our agency and we are extremely proud of it. Everything that motivates us in business fell in place in this project – from a client who believes us, concrete positive changes in the society we are influencing through communication, to the fact that we have shown that we can do things that become a European or a global example right here in Split. I have to thank Split Parking and the “For more accessible Split” initiative, who approached this project with full confidence and engagement, and this award is one of the success stories of our common success. Knowing them, I don’t think we will stop at this, and the final goal will only be achieved when legislative regulations are amended in the form of the Rulebook on Accessibility Designations and other laws that will enable better control and sanctioning of offenders, and we expect these changes this year,” said Jerko Trogrlić.
The decision to award Polaris to Vajt was made by a jury of 35 renowned international experts (USA, UK, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Greece, Brazil, Croatia, India, Latvia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Peru) from the fields of political consultancy, digital marketing, public relations, media, marketing, design and development of new technologies.
Campaign “Want to change places?” has caused great public interest. In the first stage, personalized traffic signs were set up across Split, featuring six persons with disabilities, in order to achieve better visibility and emotional reaction as well as a strong sense of shame and condemnation of the environment for the offender. The campaign has been able to contextualize a largely forgotten topic, sensitize the public and make citizens into traffic police, reporting the offenders more than ever. The campaign spread all over Croatia, and ten more towns set signs, and many others have announced they would join.
In the second phase of the campaign, a hidden camera style video was released that soon became viral. It captured offenders addressed by a young man in a wheelchair. In the first three months after the campaign in Split, the number of parking violations fell by 20%, and the decline continued in 2019.
The third phase of the campaign is still under way. And the last step is to amend the Rulebook on Accessibility Designation in Croatia, initiated with the aim of preventing its misuse.