The issue of being ‘Fire Ready’ is far too complex to provide a simple call to action that can be applied across all scenarios. A range of personal factors and decisions based on individual circumstances will often impact at what point the ‘fire danger’ decision is made. However, a lack of awareness/understanding of fire danger ratings and limited preparation can have tragic results. We needed to ensure that if and when Victorian’s searched for warnings or information, they found an accurate alert. Our solution was born out of the thing people turn to first in an emergency? Their smart phone. And the first thing they normally see when using their phone: Google Adwords. We turned Adwords into a real time alert network. A system that served accurate, geographically relevant fire risk alerts.

The campaign success hinged on serving the right message to the right user at the right time. We used location based targeting to serve each district within regional areas and urban fringe communities with the relevant alert ad.

Using a mobile network location based targeting system and a distinctive combination of Wi-Fi and telco signal strength, we mapped out locations. This helped us accurately identify the user’s location within the CFA fire districts. We then over laid this data with MCN ID targeting which uses aggregated Telstra subscriber data (age, gender and postcode data) cross referenced with Experian and Roy Morgan data. Using both publishers enabled us to accurately serve the right message to the right person.

A global first in search-marketing, this campaign was crucial in alerting and educating Victorians about fire and fire risks.

Our real-time strategy allowed us to communicate multiple messages to key audiences: mitigating the danger for those living in at-risk bushfire communities and raising awareness for urban fringe communities and travellers.

We drove behavioural change with our search ads, by serving relevant, personalised alerts when people needed them most. Without a live ‘real time’ approach, this campaign’s effectiveness would have been limited.

Our ultimate goal for this campaign was to prevent any casualties in the summer fire season and provide a safer Victoria. During the height of summer, 1 in 2 Victorians were clicking on our ads, proving the presence and engagement we were able to achieve with this solution.

No Victorian lost their life due to fire this season and whilst this cannot be attributed solely to our campaign, our ‘alert ads’

This idea hinged on the use of 'real time' data to ensure that during a bushfire, people in danger received information that could potentially save their life.

These 'alerts' were sent using the existing 'Google Adwords' media platform.

The alerts targeted those most at risk based on their location, weather data and fire emergency warnings.

For the campaign to be successful, we needed to simplify the complexities around fire danger warnings. Due to the diverse set of risks posed by fires at a local level, this meant we needed to deliver multiple messages to a wide range of audiences at either different times or simultaneously if conditions demanded.

With all activity being intrinsically linked to weather conditions we had to find a creative way to plan for fire danger risks. We developed a dynamic content solution which integrated Fire Danger Rating Warnings Data, Weather Alerts and Geographic Zoning.

The true hero of the strategy was our ability to successfully map the CFA feed data against nine districts to serve ‘hyper’ local results. This was a complex process, which involved not only building HTML5 dynamic creative templates but creating trigger rules to manage the frequency of the key fire danger messages.

We were tasked with translating bushfire awareness into immediate behavioural action in one of the most fire prone regions in the world: Victoria, Australia.

Our challenge was to simultaneously educate and warn Victorians of the dangers of bushfires in regional Victoria, grassfires on Melbourne’s urban fringe, as well as caution travellers planning interstate travel. In this instance with lives at risk, failure was not an option.

Most importantly, whatever ‘warning’ people found had to be relevant, up to date and accurate. This meant we had to come up with a ‘data first’ solution.