Unsung Heroes
Reframing smoke alarms as the unsung heroes they really are — a print, radio and OOH campaign for HM Government Fire Kills, pitched against several big agencies and won.
- Client
- Fire Kills (HM Government)
- Agency
- Engine
- My role
- Creative
- Year
- 2016
Smoke alarms are one of the most disliked things in our lives. We measured sentiment online and discovered Piers Morgan was more liked than smoke alarms.
Previous campaign messaging for Fire Kills had focused on the negative consequences of not testing your smoke alarm — research claiming you were most likely to survive a fire if alerted in time to escape, and that most alarms fail due to lack of testing.
Our goal was to reframe the messaging — to celebrate smoke alarms as the unsung heroes they really are.
The insight
The original idea was that your smoke alarm was longing for your touch. Even though you ignore them, they’ll stand by you no matter what. Strangely, the inspiration came from a clip of Futurama — Fry’s dog waiting for him.
By personalising the smoke alarms, it became easy to anthropomorphise them — to give them faces — by tapping into pareidolia, where people see faces in things.
The work
The campaign ran in print, radio, and out-of-home. It also included a technology innovation that, at the time of writing, was scheduled for further rollout.
Fire Kills became a new client for Engine. We pitched against several big agencies and won. The final pieces of work hardly changed from the pitch.
I’m personally proud of this one for two reasons. I come from a family of fire-fighters, so it was a way of connecting with my family. And the process made me want to get involved with creative work properly — to try and make a difference in people’s lives.
Results showed that people started testing their alarms more often.