Dumb Ways to Die: Creativity Done the Aussie Way

This week marked the biggest event for advertisers following the Super Bowl: The Cannes Film Festival.  For seven days, advertisers from all over the world gather in Cannes, France for the opportunity to see which advertisements are voted as the best of the year in front of their peers.  Agencies, advertisers, and sponsors wait with bated breath to hear if their names are called to receive accolades and recognition.

This year, an Australian public service announcement took the world by storm and won for Best Integrated Campaign.  The video, “Dumb Ways to Die” was produced by the Australian Metro to encourage people to practice safe habits near train tracks.  Recognizing that the public service announcement needed a creative and catchy way to attract attention, the company created a song to stick in people’s heads while they stand on train station platforms.

How effective was the campaign?   The song, reminiscent of Train’s “50 Ways to Say Goodbye,” is ranked as the third most viral advertising campaign of all time (fourth on this list) and is the most shared PSA in history with the song available on iTunes, a website, a book, a smartphone game, interactive outdoor posters, radio advertising, and Tumblr GIFs.  At train stations in Australia, screens broadcast karaoke versions of the song.  Every piece of this campaign leads consumers to take the pledge to “not be dumb.”  Most importantly, the Melbourne Metro has recorded a 21% reduction in accidents and deaths compared to last year.

Who knew shuffling jelly beans could make such an impact?  Matt MacDonald the chief creative officer with JWT explains, "It takes what could be a gruesome and depressing message and makes it joyful and shareable and hummable and everything a great ad should be.”

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For digital advertisers, this campaign represents the key notions that the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) recently outlined their research on Liquid Creativity at the Cannes Festival.  The “Mobile Manifesto” laid out broad notions for enhancing creativity and ad impact in mobile brand messaging.  While the research focused on mobile platforms, the four central notions remain applicable to all digital mediums:

1. BRANDING: Clear and persistent branding is important for building brand awareness
2. DESIGN: A striking color palette can drive ad recall, but legibility is paramount
3. MESSAGING: Short, focused messaging plays well in mobile’s small format (or for the purpose of this post, make messaging consistent with the format available)
4. RESPONSE: Consumers respond to mobile ads that give them something back

This campaign excelled in all of these areas.  Branding: the same characters and messages appeared in the songs, videos, and all other presentations.  Design: the characters were simplistic, used a broad color palette, and captured taking part in crazy actions enabling the visuals to resonate and be recalled by viewers.  Messaging: the message was emphasized again and again as the song chanted "Dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die" before giving an example, "[Poking] a stick at a grizzly bear” or “[Running] across the tracks between the platforms.”  Additionally, because the medium was focused largely on a YouTube video, the message could be longer and repetitive to help drive home the purpose.  Finally, response: the audience’s response was evident as views skyrocketed and so many other mediums picked up the message.

As context no longer refers solely to the advertisement on the screen, but the entire life of the targeted consumer, it is important in any message to understand 1. Where the consumer is located? 2. What the consumer is doing? and 3. What does the consumer need help with at that moment?  For this campaign, they targeted Australian citizens and specifically metro riders, the consumers were doing “dumb” things around train stations, and they needed to be aware of the consequences of their actions.  The campaign’s targeting strategy called the audience to action and the Melbourne Metro is approaching 1 million pledges on its website.  

Dumb Ways to Die

The success of this campaign lies in its integration across platforms.  With so many versions and adaptations of the song and characters, the audience can learn and share the message in a way that is most convenient for them.  Whether they are teaching the lessons in schools using the campaign’s book or humming along to the Karaoke version on the metro platform, people continue to feel the impact of these silly jelly beans.  

Can other digital advertising and marketing campaigns be as successful by using the same integrated campaign tactics?

Sources:

http://www.canneslions.com/work/2013/direct/

http://money.msn.com/now/blog--why-dumb-ways-to-die-became-a-viral-hit

http://www.iab.net/iablog/2013/06/what-works-in-mobile-walking-the-tightrope-between-consumer-research-and-creativity.html

http://www.iab.net/mobilemanifesto
http://www.google.com/think/images/dumb-ways-to-die_campaigns_02.jpg
http://www.google.com/think/images/dumb-ways-to-die_campaigns_03.jpg