Has Dumb Ways to Die been effective?
While Dumb Ways to Die has won more creative awards than almost any other it has not been able to replicate that success in the coveted effectiveness categories. Miranda Ward investigates whether the much-vaunted campaign was ultimately a failure.
Recently AdAge named Metro Trains’ Dumb Ways to Die campaign as the 12th best campaign of the 21st century, an accolade largely based on the its creative prowess after it stormed the Cannes Lions advertising festival in 2013 to become the most awarded campaign in the history of the awards.
However, questions have been raised over how effective the campaign was in its goal of keeping Melburnians safer around trains, after it failed to win metal in the Creative Effectiveness category at Cannes last year, and picking up just a silver and two bronzes at the Australian Effies in 2013.
The campaign, created by McCann Melbourne, launched in the third quarter of 2012, and to date has more than 97m views on its official YouTube video, as well as spawning dozens of cover versions and unofficial uploads.
can someone good with numbers help me ascertain the facts here. So far, i get that it’s a catchy jingle and cute execution, and probably of more value to the agency than melbourne’s train-crossers… hmmm… AdGrunt? Groucho? Anonymous?
I asked my 15 year old stepson what game he was playing on his phone the other day. He said, “Dumb ways to die”. I said, “Did you know that is an advertising campaign for safety near train lines?”. His answer, “What? Really?”
Every mother I know is sick of this song. It’s clearly working.
yeah campaign effectiveness is often measured by how sick mother’s are of the jingle
I was one of the judges of the DWTD EFFIE paper.
I thought any link to effectiveness was tenuous at best and that the campaign hadn’t been running nearly long enough to provide any clear proof.
As such, I marked it down significantly and I was therefore extremely disappointed when other judges gave it higher marks.
in my opinion, DWTD was marked up as a result of it’s creativity and given a benefit of the doubt it shouldn’t have received for it’s effectiveness
I’m with the judge there. The campaign was about reducing accidents in Melbourne Australia. Showing data of how many worldwide downloads of videos and games isn’t answering the question of whether the campaign did what it set out to do in Melbourne Australia.
I love the campaign but show me data on Melbourne results and we can see the level of success.
What counts as an effective campaign anyway these days?! There are so many different forms of measurement how can we not realise that this campaign has touched millions of people and clearly taught them to be conscious of train safety. Everyone I know is aware of this campaign and its messaging – perhaps the people that are sceptics wish they had come up with something as groundbreaking and effective as this…. Makes you wonder…
Sorry, I got here as fast as I could, hmmm.
TL; DR: it’s a nice idea that captured the imagination, awards and spin-offs. Its efficacy in *doing what it’s supposed to* is very doubtful. So rendering the whole exercise a circle-jerk that devalues the value of advertising.
How many recent public service campaigns do you think the average 24-year-old remembers?
I am certain that among the target audience of death-defying dunderheads considering a drunken dash across the tracks, more than a few have considered how uncool it would be to have this earworm mocking them posthumously.
Thanks Metro Trains, McCann and everyone involved. You’re saving lives globally. I’m glad the human gene pool will have a few more dunderheads. I used to be a dunderhead too.
Can’t discredit the genius of the creativity – award shows around the world certainly haven’t. But we’re not in the entertainment business, but the influence business.
Perhaps a reminder that for an industry begging to be taken more seriously in the boardroom (whilst earning trust from CEOs), we have to look to ‘cut the rubbish’ – meaning less interesting (likes, follows, shares, views), more credible (quantifiable demand for goods and services).
Deaths are down. Injuries are down. It’s the only campaign in market. Miranda, why the obvious negative bias? Why drag these guys and this campaign down? What’s the point?
An Aussie campaign is celebrated as one of the campaigns of all time and Aussies try and drag it down. Dumb stuff Mumbrella.
Millions of people all around the world have engaged with this campaign and many of these have absorbed, talked and continue to talk about the message to be safe around trains.
Sounds pretty effective to me.
Totally effective.
Sample of n=1 … but I am a case in point.
Yes I saw this campaign. Many times. It is seared into my brain so awareness … tick. I am one of the 90m.
But the proof positive is that since this campaign launched I have not had one close call with a Melbourne Metro train in that whole period.
Do you think it helps that I live in Sydney?
Moral of the story: never confuse correlation with causality.
What is most relevant with this case is linking the results to the objectives and what was genuinely set before the campaign was developed, as opposed to post-rationalised after the event to enter effectiveness awards.
Having read the paper and the case put forward, unfortunately the first three of four objectives have no benchmarks and are so vague there is no accountable. As for the all important behavioural outcome of the fourth, this cannot be attributed to the campaign given the evidence made available.
We should all celebrate proven, highly effective work as we all should applaud great creativity, however this campaign has not made a case that it worked. Worst of all, ‘Dumb Ways To Die’ was focused on the issue of saving lives, and that comes with a responsibility in itself. Both that it changes risky risky behaviour and that the industry can learn from. It’s time agency’s took effectiveness seriously and grew-up. Unfortunately McCann is not doing itself, its client and certainly not those who want to do work that is genuinely effective any favours at all.
thanks AdGrunt
Don’t just review the effies paper (which did win three effies). Look at the official stats. A quick look at the transport safety Victoria stats shows that 4 of those 5 deaths in 2013 were accidents in country areas, and didn’t involve metro trains. That leaves only one fatal accident in Melbourne in that year. Serious accidents have more or less halved.
Explain that?
Facts and figures aside, it’s still hands down one of the best Aussie marketing campaigns in years. Can’t wait to see what they do next!
“@Paul” – lol
Lowering accidents and deaths around train stations using only ads, and with $80,000 or whatever it was – and they came up with the world’s most popular ad. i mean, if you’ve got a better way with that budget and task…i’d like to see it! no ad, no matter what, will have stop people from being dumb. dwtd was probably the next best thing you could do.
Why don’t we just invest money into education and community and raise the benchmark. Then we will not need public awareness campaigns, because we will all be smart enough to not jump on railway tracks.
(Or should we tuck that idea away with renewables and carbon pricing…?)
Paul has it right. The first three stated metrics are as useless at proving efficacy as they are vague. And metric four is only ever talked about in terms of its correlations. If you have high school aged children, go and ask them about the difference between causation and correlation. The latter proves precisely nothing. If you’re going to draw back that bow, you may as well have asked commuters about whether they intend to act safely around trains and used that as your key metric because self-reported data about people’s behaviour is about as valid as correlations.
I’d argue ripple strips on platforms were the most impactful means of increasing safety. Also lets not forget Victoria now plans to remove most level crossings, so clearly this cute little jingle isn’t the messiah of rail safety some will have you believe.
Recall is recall and nothing else. ‘Awareness/engagement/PR buzz/free media coverage” measurements are not measurements of effectiveness. They’re simply measurements of ‘awareness/engagement/PR buzz/media coverage’.
As an industry, we’re too quick to make ‘measurements’ of inconsequential things the benchmark of a campaign’s success. One instance of that in the DWTD’s example is the ‘commitment to be safe’ target of 10,000 signatories.
I believe that by continuing to kneel at the altar of ‘false measurement gods’ we do our clients and industry a disservice.
McCann is no more guilty of this than the rest of us.
Award writing 101:
Step 1: Identify the quantifiable results of a campaign
Step 2: Re-write the objectives to match the available quantifiable results
Step 3: Cajole your client into signing off on it.
We all know this right.
I seem to recall that Clems did a decent job showing how “Pinkie” worked, so maybe it can be done. ‘hope so.
Never mind the overall verdict, it turns out that Metro had actually unintentionally sown the seeds for a more long term approach in an unexpected audience. Looks like Melbourne’s state animal would be their adorable beans – the beans that, in this context, will never die.
Jeez I’d hate to live with most of you lot.
How anyone can fail to see this campaign as a success shows one of two things. Either McCann can’t write a good effectiveness case study (at least not in this case) or we’re all so desperate to see it lose something.
And for what it’s worth, ‘just a silver and two bronzes’ at any Effie’s is still pretty damn good. You may realise that some award shows don’t even hand out gold.
Interesting to see McCann today named Australia’s top agency in the global 2015 Warc 100, which ranks the world’s most awarded campaigns in effectiveness and strategy competitions. And McCann Australia placed a not too shabby 6th overall in the world rankings.
They were the only Australian agency with three campaigns in the global top 100: Metro Trains’ ‘Dumb Ways To Die’ ranked #18, V/Line’s ‘Guilt Trips’ ranked #19 and Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation’s ‘100 Day Challenge’ ranked #76.
Tough crowd indeed here in Australia. However good to see this work being celebrated for its effectiveness on the world stage:
http://www.warc.com/warc100.100