Accidents and deaths among young people on Melbourne’s Metro train system had been on the rise for years.

But young people don’t listen to public safety messages. We needed to make train safety part of the conversation amongst 13-25 year olds.

The strategy was to throw a hand grenade into the world of PSA messaging. To be so deliberately different to the norm, we couldn’t help but create a conversation around the message.

We wrote a song called Dumb Ways to Die, created a music video for it, and attributed it to an artist that didn’t exist: Tangerine Kitty.

We uploaded the video onto YouTube and the song onto iTunes. Within a week it had been viewed 20 million times and covered on every news service in Australia. Within a month, it had captured the world’s attention so effectively, it made it into Google’s 2012 Zeitgeist.

Dumb Ways to Die used a radical approach to public safety messaging. By using entertainment rather than shock tactics, we were able to engage a young audience wired to resist lectures and warnings from authorities.

And given the importance of peer-to-peer recommendations in behavioural change, this approach meant that young people would actively share the safety message amongst themselves, rather than simply mocking it as they would usually do.

Before spending a dollar on media, the music video received over 20 million YouTube views. The song charted on iTunes in 28 countries, and made the top 10 in several. Over 3 million facebook shares made it the most shared PSA in history.

The website is nearing its millionth pledge to be safe. In post-testing, 39% of our core audience said they would act safer around trains because of the campaign. For the three months post-launch (the most recent data), Metro experienced a 21% reduction in accidents and deaths in key accident areas compared to the same time last year.