The challenge

Advertising isn’t just about making people buy stuff, it can also be a force for good. The Fire Authority for Northern Ireland wanted to encourage people to take positive steps to protect themselves and their families.

The authority’s goal was to reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by house fires. Five key messages were identified to help in this task: the need to check batteries in smoke alarms; the need to ensure candles were always properly extinguished; that householders should have an escape plan; take care when using a chip pan and; that closing doors could give householders an extra 15 minutes to escape in the event of a fire.

Research suggested that the adverts would be more effective if they didn’t feature a specific character and thus the creative focused on the messages that people dying in a house fire might leave through the eyes of a firefighter.

The creative concept was based on the handprints that firefighters often find in fire scenes as people trapped by heat and smoke desperately try to escape. The Writing on the Wall campaign used these ghostly messages as the means to persuade people to change their assumption that it couldn’t happen to them.

At the same time the Fire Authority also ran a separate campaign reinforcing the importance of checking smoke alarm batteries on a weekly basis. While Northern Irish households had a high level of smoke alarm ownership, post fire checks often found that they weren’t always working.

The second campaign called “Touch for Life” promoted Monday as the best day to check and change smoke alarm batteries.

The TV solution

The target audience was the entire population of Northern Ireland so a mixed media schedule was developed to convey the five key steps to safety identified by the Fire Authority.

TV would allow each of the five Writing on the Wall messages to be targeted at the most effective audience. The ads warning about the dangers of chip pans, for example, were upweighted at dinnertime and late at night to hit mealtimes and post-pub snackers. Such ads ran during the key risk period of October to February when people spend more time indoors.

A deal with Ulster TV put the message out in all dayparts, hitting a wide range of demographic groups. The long-term deal also enabled the Authority to obtain a substantial discount on the media cost of the activity.

Other media included radio, press and outdoor, with radio providing a key medium for repeating the messages during the winter as well as an opportunity for using different creative at different times of day. Outdoor gave the activity extra scale in January 2005 while press provided an ideal medium for more detailed messages.

The Touch for Life campaign ran during local TV news programming on Mondays with the aim of making this a regular day to check batteries.

The ads ran in three local news bulletins every Monday during key months of the year. This would help build frequency but also put the message in an environment where it would be reinforced by any reports about local fires.

Results

The two campaigns had a dramatic impact, delivering not only impressive advertising awareness but also a significant reduction in the number of fires.
Fire Authority figures show a 14% reduction in the number of household fires, a 12% decline in the number of fire injuries year on year and 60% of consumers took direct action as a result of the activity.

Isolating the five specific areas for action shows that each element of the Writing on the Wall advertising has successfully changed behaviour.

There has been a 39% decrease in candle fires, 18% of those surveyed now have a fire escape plan, the number of chip pan fires has fallen by 18%, the number of householders closing their doors at night has increased by 11% and 42% of those questioned now test their smoke alarm.

Eight-two percent of those who did change their behaviour attributed the fact to TV advertising.

The agency has also produced a Cantonese version of the campaign to target Northern Ireland’s largest ethnic minority.

"TV played a vital part in communicating the life-saving message of fire safety behaviour. The regular reminders in key programmes provided a compelling message that changed people's behaviour and ultimately reduced the number of house fires and injuries. Although other media were used to deliver the overall campaign, post campaign research showed that 82% attributed their changed behaviour to the TV advertising."
Orla Ross, Account Director, Ardmore Advertising