Young men disproportionately make up more than a third of preventable drownings in New Zealand. That’s because they love doing dumb stuff. Give them a high cliff to jump off and they’re as happy as can be. But it’s this kind of behaviour that’s killing them. These men were an obvious target for Water Safety New Zealand’s summer campaign. But engaging them is easier said than done.
We needed to cut through the noise and engage with this group in a relevant way. Then we could start a conversation with them and even get them to spread our message for us – especially important, given the modest budget. Once we had our audience engaged we could convince them to modify their behaviour and make smarter decisions around water. But to get through to them the media and tone would be all important.
Our audience of New Zealand Males 15-24 is notoriously hard to reach with decreasing media usage across all traditional platforms and a lower dominance on local content. According to Global Web Index (GWI) 61.1% watch less than an hour of TV a day, half of which don’t watch it at all! However, 64.1% of young NZ males use Instagram on a regular basis.
We know this cynical audience reacts badly to being told what to do. Positive safety messaging simply doesn’t resonate with them. Instead, we took up a darkly comedic standpoint, under the creative position “Swim dumb and you’re done.”
Introducing the Swim Reaper…
The Swim Reaper looked to claim as many lives as he could by openly encouraging young people to be dumb around water. However, in doing so, he ironically points out the stupid behaviours that can lead to fatalities.
Results
Over the peak summer period, drownings of young men totaled zero.
Increased awareness of Water Safety with the Swim Reaper campaign reaching over 82% of the Men 15 -24 in NZ
Strong in engagement by target audience with one in three people commenting on Swim Reaper content and 10% of all people under 25 in NZ following @iamswimreaper
It won Facebook Awards and has been covered on Buzzfeed and in other global media.