DUMB WAYS TO DIE THE GAME

Bronze Spike

Case Film

Presentation Board

TitleDUMB WAYS TO DIE THE GAME
BrandMETRO TRAINS
Product / ServiceMETRO TRAINS
CategoryA08. Best Use of Other Digital Platforms (Incl. Mobile Devices)
EntrantMcCANN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company McCANN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Advertising Agency McCANN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Adrian Mills Mccann Melbourne Planner
Alec Hussain Metro Trains Account Director
Adrian Mills Mccann Melbourne Group Account Director
Cinnamon Darval Mccann Melbourne Agency Producer
Mark Bradley Mccann Melbourne Agency Producer
Pat Baron Mccann Melbourne Typographer
Julian Frost Mccann Melbourne Director
Pat Baron Mccann Melbourne Art Director
John Mescall Mccann Melbourne Copywriter
Pat Baron Mccann Melbourne Creative Director
John Mescall Mccann Melbourne Executive Creative Director

Results and Effectiveness

We simply uploaded the game for download and waited. One hour after going live, the first tweet about the game was sent from Moscow. By the end of the day, the game had been downloaded 30,000 times. The game took 3 days to reach number 1 in Australia. It has been downloaded in Australia 1.1 million times. Overall, the game has been downloaded 14 million times, and was the top free app for over a week in the USA, UK, Germany and Australia, generating 100’s of millions of hours of engagement with the Dumb Ways to Die safety message.

Creative Execution

Our strategy was to create a smartphone and table game that allowed extended engagement with the rail safety message. Games on these devices are hugely popular with our key target market who seek out and share compelling content. Tactics We wanted to launch the game quietly. Dumb Ways to Die continues to be one of the most viral advertisement on the internet today, and social comments and mentions still pour through in their thousands every day. We wanted to see if there was genuine hunger for new campaign material so we launched the game with no messaging at all, but with a back-up PR plan.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Every year there are needless deaths and accidents around Melbourne’s trains. And while rail accidents are tragic, they are in most cases completely avoidable. This was particularly true for young adults. After the initial success of the Dumb Ways to Die campaign, Metro Trains had two key objectives: 1. Extend engagement with the campaign safety message beyond existing content. 2. Test the market demand for more Dumb Ways to Die content as we look towards extending the franchise. Our task was to reduce preventable deaths and accidents in young Melbournians. Young Australians are digital natives, which means they consume media when and where they want. For us to cut through a market filled with parental slogans on big issues we needed to embrace both the active choice they make in the media they consume and leverage the power they hold in their ability to share and influence others.