We set out to create the world’s first anti-influencer. We knew young guys wouldn’t listen to advice on being safe, so we invented someone who would give such atrocious advice, no one would ever follow it. We created the Swim Reaper – a sociopathic Instagrammer who, instead of dispensing safety advice, would dispense drowning advice.

His jarringly offensive and incredibly dark sense of humour would shock, entertain and engage our audience, while ironically pointing out just how dumb their dangerous behaviour is. In other words, our aim was to save lives by encouraging deaths.

For this to work he needed to behave as a real member of the social media “inner circle”:

- Be discovered: Have natural social capital and not seem like an ad.

- Participate: Be active in mateship conversations.

- Be salient in the moment: Relevant to every potentially fatal opportunity across NZ’s most dangerous spots.

As summer started, we orchestrated a discovery phase, ensuring the Swim Reaper started infiltrating our audience’s newfeeds organically. Firstly, by convincing Water Safety NZ to launch without branding, negating “ad avoidance”.

Then, post-by-post, we rolled out over 100 pieces of content from the Swim Reaper over the 2017/18 summer, encouraging all the bad behaviours that lead to fatalities.

As engagement and followers snowballed, he started participating – using hashtags to find guys posting dumb swimming behaviour and leaving encouraging comments. He was omnipresent – at every beach, river and lake, encouraging every bad behaviour in the book.

The Swim Reaper achieved cult status, making headlines around the world:

- “This ‘Swim Reaper’ Instagram account is absolute gold.” – BoredPanda

- “A country created a viral vacationing ‘Swim Reaper’ and people love it.” – BuzzFeed

- “NZ’s water safety mascot is going viral for all the right reasons.” – MTV

He amassed over 320,000 Instagram followers, who liked, commented and shared in record numbers – giving him higher engagement than New Zealand’s “real” influencers:

- 353% more engagement than Taika Waititi

- 179% more engagement than the All Blacks

- 70% more engagement than Lorde

But, most importantly, we surpassed Water Safety’s target of halving the number of drownings from the previous year. Over the peak summer period, drownings of young men dropped 81%.*

*Three drownings of males aged 15-24 in New Zealand over the peak summer period of 18 December 2017 – 14 January 2018.