China has become a rapidly developing automobile using society. With the increasing number of vehicles, traffic congestion and frequent traffic accidents have begun to threaten pubic transport, which has become a huge social problem in China.

The number of traffic accidents increases about 10% every year due to the rapid deterioration of traffic conditions caused by the ever-increasing number of cars on the road.

Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën Automobile Limited is a joint venture between the Dongfeng Motor Corporation and the French PSA Peugeot Citroën. Based in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, it manufactures Peugeot and Citroën models for sale in China.

Citroen set a challenge to improve the traffic safety manners of the drivers in China, which is lower than the developed countries in the world and approached Dentsu Beijing to find a creative solution to solve this business problem.

The insight that was unearthed by the Dentsu planners was everyone drives in a hurry, and when there is traffic jam, people often feel anxious resulting in “road rage.” 

In these cases, everyone tends to put themselves as a priority. Drivers become self-centred when they are driving alone but their driving behaviours change when their loved ones are in the car with them.

They found that when drivers hear the voice of family in the car it was a very powerful safety mechanism. 

So Dentsu Bejing creative idea was to develop an innovative APP called ‘Fami-Navi’ which offers safe travel guidance. 

Through the built-in recording script, parents and children can learn traffic etiquette together, record the voice of driver’s child or spouse, and then automatically import it to replace the existing navigation voice. Then, the driver can enjoy a ride navigated by his or her most important person’s voice.

So what ‘Fami-Navi’ does is get children to learn about traffic safety manners by reading them a picture book and recording their voice. Using voice recognition technology the recorded voice is linked to map data, turning the recorded children voices into navigation voices.

These voices act as reminders for the drivers of gentle driving manners. By being navigated by families’ voice to their destination while driving, it felt as if they were carrying their families in the car with them and that amplified the need for safe driving. Good Innovation!

Voice recognition as a process of taking the spoken word as an input to a computer program will see many innovations over the coming years. Voice is human. From Amazon Echo to Cortana to a real life Star Trek communicator badge – technology has finally begun to find its voice in production engagements. 

This process will certainly be important to virtual reality programs because it provides a fairly natural and intuitive way of controlling the simulation while allowing the user’s hands to remain free.

The result on ‘Fami-Navi’ since the the launch a couple of months ago has seen over 90% of APP users (data from the APP pop-up questionnaires) became more cautious on the traffic safety manners. It changes the consciousness of drivers while driving.

Last night at the AD STARS Beijing Dentsu’s work for FAMI-NAVI won the Direct-Use of direct marketing Silver Award. 

AD STARS awards which was founded in 2008 is now the Asia’s largest and the world’s third largest advertising festival.

Beijing Dentsu has recently been active and involved in domestic and international advertising awards competitions. 

This year, Beijing Dentsu has won 5 awards which include ADFEST, AMES, Asia-Pacific Tambuli Awards and other International advertising festivals. The way they are travelling I think the best is yet to come.