C3 & Meta: Beyond Performance
Digital PRInternational
What happens when strong data has real community impact in America?
Our “Deadliest roads in America” campaign proves that community-focused data is the ultimate currency in today’s PR landscape. By localising national insights for our client, we secured +300 media mentions across 19 states and 7 TV features.
The challenge
Road safety is heavily reported, but rarely localised to focus on historic data, that affects cities, towns and counties across each state. Sometimes even state statistics often fail to resonate at a city level, limiting pickup and engagement. We needed a way to:
- Cut through national news fatigue
- Offer hyper-local relevance
- Scale coverage across all 50 states
- Earn links, not just mentions
The insight
A nationwide analysis of 129,825 fatal crashes revealed:
State highways (not interstates) account for the highest share of fatal crashes (42%) nationwide.
While the national figure is startling, data at that scale can often feel abstract. We wanted to make it personal.
What we did next was the real game-changer:
We localised this insight for every state. By distilling a single national dataset into 50 distinct, community-focused stories, we moved the conversation from “national statistics” to the specific roads people use every day.
The strategy
We built a scalable, localisation-first PR campaign:
- Analysed FARS crash data by state, city, and road type
- Created 50 state-specific emailers
- Developed unique headlines and angles for each state
- Built in city- and county-level data, available on request
- Supported coverage with expert commentary and national context
This ensured the data wasn’t just informative, it was personally relevant.
The execution
What does this look like in practice? Take Texas. While national trends often highlight interstates, the local data told a more nuanced story. Fatalities were split almost evenly across road types: 30% on state highways, followed by 24% on US highways, 24% on local streets, and only 22% on interstates. By leading with these specific local insights, we gave Texas media a story that hit home, rather than a statistic they’d seen before.
Each state pitch included:
- The most dangerous roads in that state
- Breakdown by road type (state highways, interstates, local streets)
- State-specific crash totals
- A national comparison angle
- Expert commentary
Within 12 hours of launch, the campaign generated direct conversations with major US news outlets, including late-night requests for additional local data, city angles, and context for live TV coverage. Journalists didn’t need convincing. They needed more detail.
The results
- 331 total media placements
- 19 total states landed so far (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming)
- Seven TV coverage features
- Coverage across national, regional, and local outlets
- Achieved early traction from outreach in just a subset of states, proving the model’s scalability
“Strong data wins when it has real human impact. When insights are localised, credible and tied to issues that affect people’s daily lives, they speak for themselves. Most journalists aren’t looking for persuasion; they’re looking for better context.”
Allen White
PR Strategy & Outreach Lead, Connective3
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