DUMB WAYS TO DIEAaliya Jaffer

Erica Barbosa Mahbuba Hussen

• Accident rates on the Melbourne Metro were rising, largely due

to an increase in risky behaviour around trains.

• A rail safety message was the last thing the audience wanted to hear and

traditional public safety messages just don't work on young people

• So they had to turn a message that people Needed to hear into a message that people

Wanted to hear and the way they did it was to embed their message into awesomely entertaining content.

• From day one, everything about this campaign was designed to be inherently

spreadable via social technologies.

THE STORY BEHIND IT…

Metro Trains claims it has achieved its rail safety aims, too: over 44,000 people in Melbourne

pledged "not to do dumb things around trains" in the four months after the campaign

launched.

The November to January period, the operator claimed it had seen a year-on-year

reduction in the number of "near-misses", from 13.29 to 9.17.

The campaign video went viral through sharing and social media starting in November2012.

"It’s different. It’s cute as hell and it gets stuck in your head. And it’s not until the last

three seconds that it is actually telling the consumer to do anything.”

I think people are immune now to most call to action in advertising unless there's a big incentive.

"I think people still like to engage with things that trigger positive emotional

responses. Cute, a bit silly, happy melody, soft colours all were attributes that made

people feel good while they engaged with the campaign."

GRAPHICS

"I didn't want shock. I didn't want gore or negative imagery that would offend. I didn’t

want to tug at the heart strings and make people cry .

‘Dumb Ways’ is something that people want to engage with, and then share. Through

the lyrics and charming animation the message subtlety gets through. Kids

aren’t scared of dying, but they definitely don't want their friends to think they are

stupid.”

When asked about the creation of the video, one person said:

The key to its success is the fact that a worthy message has been embedded into

content of such high quality that people are actually paying money to purchase it. To

be truly sharable, that’s how good your content must be.

The music track was popular, too, charting on iTunes in 28 countries.

-It was viewed 2.5 million times within 48 hours and 4.7 million times within 72 hours.

“Dumb ways to Valentine”

“April Fools way to Die”