In a very cool way to finish the year, we recently heard that ‘Impact‘, the massive road safety project I was part of for the RACV’s Royal Auto magazine and website, has won another two awards.
This time it was at the prestigious Australian Magazine Awards, where the series won ‘Best Feature Article’ and ‘Best Use of Multi Media’.
It’s been so affirming to see the reaction to our series. I’m not usually big on awards, and have rarely entered them, but the response to ‘Impact‘ has really buoyed me, and underlined why I think a heroic content agency (by which I have always meant: telling stories about people doing heroic things) is important.
‘Impact‘ was a brave commission by Royal Auto’s then-editor Seamus Bradley, and then-publisher Alison Dean. It was an expensive, time consuming and ambitious piece of work, designed to hopefully save lives on the road by gazing unflinchingly on the ‘hidden road toll’, by which I mean all the people who don’t die in road accidents but come out of crashes badly hurt and with long roads to recovery ahead of them. By following victims from the air ambulance, through Emergency, surgery and Intensive Care, and then following them for more than a year afterwards, we were able to bring home the damage accidents can cause.
So don’t text and drive, don’t drink and drive, and don’t drive angry/too fast/aggressively. Believe me, having spent the time at 3 am watching as a team of elite surgeons work furiously to try and not have to saw off a leg (in the end, they did), you do not want to be the person on that Emergency bed.
Hopefully we also showcased the amazing skills, dedication and occasional miracles pulled off by Victoria’s trauma doctors, paramedics, nurses and others involved in saving and then caring for road trauma patients. It’s world’s best practice and we’re lucky they’re there.
NOISY BOY MEDIA 