AT&T Beefs Up ‘It Can Wait’ Campaign With #X Hashtag Promotion

Likely, you’ve seen AT&T’s “It Can Wait” texting and driving campaign. Today, working with MRY, AT&T has relaunched its “It Can Wait” website and is giving heavy emphasis to #X, the symbol it hopes becomes the standard for telling people you are driving and can’t text right now. The site houses a #X explanatory video, […]

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Likely, you’ve seen AT&T’s “It Can Wait” texting and driving campaign. Today, working with MRY, AT&T has relaunched its “It Can Wait” website and is giving heavy emphasis to #X, the symbol it hopes becomes the standard for telling people you are driving and can’t text right now.

The site houses a #X explanatory video, an invitation to make a pledge not to text and drive which can be shared to Twitter and Facebook (over 5 million have done so), tips and tools in the form of an Android app and iOS instruction on how to easily use #X and a gallery of social media shares related to the campaign.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/yFL0JcRjS1A[/youtube]

The intent, of course, is to get people to use #X before they drive. That’s great as long as it’s used on social media and friends check those social profiles or it’s sent to a friend who has just texted you before you drive. But what if a friend texts you while you are driving?

There are instructions on the site to create a shortcut using #X on iOS but one still has to text those two symbols for the message to be sent. The Android app is a better solution. Once installed, it silences incoming alerts, turns off text messaging and directs incoming calls to voicemail. All great but even better would be an auto-reply feature that sent an “I’m driving” message to anyone who sent a text.2014-07-28_16-09-01

All in all, it’s valiant effort even though a 2013 national survey of drivers age 16 years and older found that about one-quarter of drivers reported sending a text message or email while driving at least once in the past 30 days, and about three-quarters said they had read a text or email.  But we have to start somewhere, don’t we?


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Steve Hall
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Steve Hall is a marketing professional, publisher, writer, community manager, photographer and all-around lover of advertising.

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