‘Dumb Ways to Die’ Nabs Grand Prix in PR, Direct Categories
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One of the campaigns widely predicted to win big in the South of France this year — "Dumb Ways to Die," a safety-promoting campaign for Metro Trains by McCann, Melbourne — picked up two Grand Prix awards on the first day of the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
It won the Grand Prix in the PR category, as well as the Grand Prix in the direct category. While it’s been expected to perform well at the festival this year, the campaign’s win in the PR category will likely be unwelcome by the PR-agency community; this is the fifth year PR has been a category at Cannes, and the Grand Prix has been won by an ad agency all five years.
What it is: This campaign, a public-safety message to encourage people to be safer around trains, was anchored by an original song about rail safety, "Dumb Ways to Die," that positioned dying or getting injured by a train as the dumbest way one could expire. It was released on YouTube as a three-minute animated music video and garnered 20 million views in a week. The song was played by radio stations as music programming and, after the agency released a karaoke version of the song, people started recording their own cover versions. The campaign also had a direct component, encouraging people to pledge to be safe around trains via outdoor billboards, a smartphone game and a children’s book. According to the campaign case-study video, the metro has seen a 21% reduction in accidents and deaths compared with the same time last year.
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