Why is this work relevant for Integrated?

The campaign was about challenging Hollywood’s misleading portrayals of house fires. So to make the idea work hardest we took the thought everywhere the movies were. Movie style posters inside cinemas, warnings before screenings of fire movies and our TVC played on New Zealand’s largest movie on demand platform, Neon. A New Zealand first. We also took the thought into movie relevant spaces in press and social, the longer dwell time giving us a chance to delve deeper into specific Hollywood inaccuracies. The campaign also included online video, social, digital, post-trailer cinema ads, and placements in online movie environment: flicks.co.nz

Background

New Zealanders were complacent about the need for smoke alarms, due to false beliefs about the survivability of house fires. Our objective was to increase the number of New Zealanders who have a working smoke alarm. To do this we needed to educate them about the speed of house fires, so they understand the importance of having an early warning system in place.

Describe the creative idea

The idea was created around the insight that people are complacent about the speed of house fires, because they’ve only seen Hollywood’s version of events. The movies show characters stepping through neatly flaming doorways, people heroically running back in to save their children and everyone making it out just in time. But that’s not how it goes. And no one knows that better than the firefighters who’ve seen the real story. The idea was all about authenticity so we used real life firefighters at every touchpoint of the campaign. The TVC is set at a New Zealand fire station in the aftermath of a fatal house fire, and features Aaron Jackson, a career firefighter. The movie poster and press executions portray a frustrated firefighter angrily correcting all the dangerously misleading inaccuracies in a movie poster and movie script. These are signed by Peter Gallagher. The National Advisor of Fire Risk.

Describe the strategy

To help people understand the importance of working smoke alarms we needed not only to challenge misconceptions around the speed of fire, but the very basis for those misconceptions. Hollywood films. This strategy used powerful first hand accounts to show the emotional impact that house fires have on firefighters. The familiar formats of movie posters and film scripts gave us the chance to educate people about lesser known facts about what makes house fires so deadly. The fact you have no sense of smell in your sleep, that doorknobs might be too hot touch, or just how quickly you can be rendered unconscious by smoke inhalation – making dramatic dialogue and heroic escapes impossible.

Describe the execution

The campaign launched nationwide 10 March 2021 and the launch phase was live until mid-May 2022. The broader ‘Firefighters Don’t Like Fire Movies’ campaign and ‘Fire Gets Real, Fast’ platform is Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s planned strategy for the next five years. **Please consider these numbers in the context of New Zealand’s population of 5 million people.** TV 60” & 15” spot buy TVNZ, Discover, Prime & SKY, Maori TV 1+ Reach 1.3M Cinema Editorial space, post movie trailer + Cinema Posters in Foyer 1+ Reach 140,000 Online Video TVNZ & YouTube Completed Views 1.2M TVNZ Partnership OnDemand – Fire Movies Content – 10” Billboard and 60” video in each ad break following fire scene Reach 482,365 Print Full Page - Dom Post, Press, Herald and Otago Daily Times Reach 813K Social Facebook & Instagram – Link Posts and Stories 6.2M impressions

List the results

**Please consider these numbers in the context of New Zealand’s population of 5 million people.** The many relevant touch points of the campaign combined to make a big impact. The campaign reached 83% of the entire population of NZ As a result of seeing the campaign over 1 million New Zealanders reported taking action around their household’s fire safety. Fire and Emergency New Zealand well exceeded their target, with over 88% of New Zealanders now reported to have a working smoke alarm. The campaign was covered by all major news media and was featured in a TVNZ series on social behavioural change “How to change behaviours and make them stick”