Our second assignment set required us to present ideas on how digital media could be incorporated into a new campaign regarding fire safety, and engage the audience with good fire safety and evacuation practice.
Working in a different group of 4 people this time, we discussed our initial thoughts and ideas similarly to the previous assignment and found some difficulty in both conveying a serious message regarding fire safety to our audience while also allowing the media and campaign to reach as wide an audience as possibleĀ – people would likely not voluntarily download an app-based advertisement for fire safety from the app store, for example, but if we went too far in making the media entertaining or comical the message might get lost. An example of a campaign striking this balance quite well is Metro Trains Melbourne’s Dumb Ways to Die video:
This video initially appears to simply be a long comedy song but at the end carries a striking message regarding train safety. This element of black comedy was well-received and the video has since gone viral to over 67 million views.
This is what we took into consideration when developing our ideas.
Reference: Metro Trains Melbourne, 2012. Dumb Ways to Die [online]. Youtube. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw [Accessed 24 Nov 2013].