In Australia, agencies and brands aspire to create branded content that engages consumers, but rarely is it done in a truly compelling way. As an industry we are improving and Dumb Ways to Die is an example of how we can turn a message that people need to hear, into a message that people want to hear.

In the case of Metro Trains, we weren't restricted by anything more than the knowledge that in order to reach our target market, we'd need to do something that was genuinely interesting to them.

Challenge.

Melbourne has a growing rail safety problem. But our target audience - young people - don’t like to listen to messages about rail safety and they hate being told what to do.

Strategy.

To turn a message about rail safety that no one wants listen to, into a piece of entertainment that people would actively seek out and share.

Embracing the importance of group dynamics with the target market, we chose to avoid the typical patronising voice of authority. Instead, everything we created would be designed to be entertaining, shareable and have the potential to generate PR.

The Big Idea

Dumb Ways to Die.

A music video. A song. A website, school book, game and interactive entertainment experience.

Ours was a four-part strategy:

1. Getting people’s attention:

Attract attention and curiosity around the song by using both traditional (Radio, TV, Posters) and social media (specifically social media which young Australian’s already associated with entertainment platforms including Soundcloud, Tumblr and Instagram) to drive initial traffic to the music video on YouTube.

2. Treat this as entertainment, not advertising:

Nothing we did felt like advertising. Instead we ensured everything we created was a form of entertainment that was easily sharable and PR worthy.

3. Amplify online and offline

In an Australian advertising first, we decided to turn iTunes into a media channel. Additional content was created across multiple channels including limited edition posters, a smartphone game and a book for schools. We also took our message to stations with interactive outdoor designed to create shareable imagery.

4. Ask for a commitment

Along the way, we invited our target to pledge their commitment to being safe around trains by visiting our campaign site and making a statement online and sharing the video with friends.

Dumb Ways to Die: A song about rail safety that charted in 28 countries on iTunes selling 70,000 copies despite being available for free download.

The music video had three key ingredients - novelty, share-ability and newsworthiness. As soon as the campaign went live online, our target audience started to share the content with each other. In just three days, the Dumb Ways to Die music video had become the most viral piece of Australian branded content in history (YouTube 2012).

Within two days, news of the song had made every Australian digital, television and radio news network and many more world-wide.

Dumb Ways to Die became the most shared PSA in history, and the 3rd most viral ad of all time. YouTube views of the main video exceeded 30m after just one month and now exceed 44m. The song became so popular that it charted in 28 countries on iTunes, with over 70,000 copies of the song sold. The song was played as content by radio stations the world over. Over 200 cover versions of the music video were created and shared by teenagers via YouTube. Schools everywhere adopted the campaign, using the video and the school book as a part of classroom learning. For the first time ever, the idea of rail safety entered popular culture.

In post testing, 39% of our core target said that they would act safer around trains because of the campaign.

Lastly, and most importantly for the three months post launch, Metro experienced a 21% reduction in accidents and deaths in key accident areas compared to the same time the previous year. Far exceeding the initial 10% objective.