New Zealand’s population is pretty thinly spread. And for Hutchwilco, a boating safety company, the target audience is particularly far flung. This means outdoor advertising is fairly redundant, and given the lack of local tv production, product placement isn’t an option. The only opportunity to truly hit all people would be tv ads, but the costs are prohibitive for a mid sized company such as Hutchwilco. Thus, we needed an idea that wasn’t mainstream media specific, at the same time as being accessible and interesting to all members of the target audience.

Hutchwilco are NZ’s oldest manufacturer of life jackets. The only problem is their customers keep dying, because the target audience of recreational fishermen don’t tell anyone where they’re going when they go fishing.

The problem is no matter how good Hutchwilco’s lifejackets are, if no one knows where fishermen go, the likelihood of finding them if they get in trouble is close to impossible. We needed to change the way fishermen behave.

To combat this, we came up with Secret Fishing Spots, an iPhone app that allows fishermen to log their secret spots without giving them away to everyone. When they go out fishing, all they do is drop a few GPS pins on the map at their favourite spots, then select the spots they’re going to each time they head out.

If for some reason they don’t come home, a loved one they have nominated can log on to secretfishingspots.co.nz and see all their spots. They can then send these coordinates straight to emergency services with the touch of a button.

The app also helps fishermen do what they do best – boast. They can use it to connect to facebook and boast about the fish they’ve caught at which secret spots. Without revealing the location of said spots, of course.

Boaties are sick of people trying to scare them into staying safe. We needed to talk to them in a different way, in a way that engaged them, not turned them off. The Secret Fishing Spots app acknowledged a bad habit of boaties, and helped turn it into a safety mechanism. After initial PR nudges on talkback radio and fishing magazines, the app gained traction with boaties and word of mouth did the rest.

Over the summer the target audience have kept the app consistently in the top 10 of free sporting apps on itunes. On the app itself, over 2,000 spots have been registered - a big deal for a demographic who tend not to tell a soul where they go.

For Hutchwilco it’s built up a new database, with 50% of those registering opting in to be contacted directly by the company through this new channel.

Most importantly it’s changed the way fishermen behave, providing them and their families with a valuable tool to keep themselves safe, that they’re actually using.