Victoria’s fire agencies urge people to make safe mistakes in new campaign via Naked Melbourne

| | 8 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-08-01 at 9.27.07 am.jpgMFB and CFA, Victoria’s fire agencies have taken a refreshing new approach in their latest campaign in partnership with Naked Communications Melbourne, aimed at increasing awareness for the surprising cause of most home fires – small, everyday mistakes.

The Safe Mistake Zone is an outdoor, social, mobile, digital, PR and experiential campaign designed to focus people’s attention on the cause of most home fires. The campaign uses humour to highlight unsafe mistakes in the home by contrasting them to amusing ‘safe’ mistakes that can be made via the campaign – mistakes that won’t cause a home fire.

Some of the safe mistakes that can be made as part of the campaign include:

• Starring in a series of embarrassing ads – connect with facebook on facebook.com/safemistakezone and we’ll use what we know about you to create an embarrassing personalised ad that will appear as a large outdoor poster, full page newspaper ad and facebook sponsored posts.

• Sending some free, borderline-inappropriate mystery mail – visit SafeMistakeZone.com.au to confuse a friend, colleague or lover with free distasteful parcels and emails sent to them on your behalf.

• Visiting a CBD or regional Safe Mistake Zone Activation – Get a bad hair style from an untrained hairdresser, sit on wet paint, choose a bad tattoo, have an awkward family portrait taken or get hitched to a complete stranger.

• Checking messages from our NotSafeForWork Snapchat account – add Mistake_Friend to receive loud, unprofessional surprise video messages during work hours.

Says Tricia Wunsch, MFB director corporate communications: “When it comes to getting people to listen to a safety message, you really need to think of creative and engaging ways to cut through what is a very saturated market. Our research shows many people believe that traditional messages around home fire safety are directed at children and are not applicable to them, yet we continue to see thousands of preventable fires occurring each year.

“Working with the team at Naked, we have developed a campaign that’s a little bit different. We hope to reengage the community and get them thinking about fire safety in the home.”

Says Tristan Graham, creative director of Naked Melbourne: “If more people were aware of the small mistakes that cause home fires, the majority of these devastating events could be avoided. The immersive and social Safe Mistake Zone platform gives Victorians countless opportunities to engage with our home fire safety message and importantly, to share it with their friends and family.”

In 2013, there were 3,559* preventable residential fires, resulting in an estimated $90 million^ in property loss.

Says Gavin Thompson, CFA deputy chief officer: “Many of these fires were caused by small mistakes in the home, like unattended cooking, smoking, poorly maintained appliances or hanging clothes too close to a heater.”

The campaign launched at Federation Square with the first ‘Safe Mistake Zone’ activation. At the event, Victorian Emergency Services Commisioner Craig Lapsley selected a bad tattoo for his arm, ‘Crape Diem’ while encouraging the public to join him in making safe mistakes instead of mistakes at home that cause fires.