When it comes to boring people silly, nothing quite does it like a safety message, no matter how well-meaning.
How do you make one fun? Maybe by not being so deadly serious about safety.
Case in point: A new safety campaign from CSX Transportation, the giant freight railroad in Washington.
The message is what you would expect: Don't fool around near railroad tracks. It can get you killed.
“It’s like saying you need air to survive,” says Jonathan Helfman, creative director at Exit 10 Advertising, the Baltimore agency hired by CSX to come up with a campaign.
What Exit 10 created were ads on the floors of platforms of Metro stations in Washington that are also games. One invites people to play hop-scotch. The message "Life is Fun" is on the ad, along with "Use caution around the tracks." The CSX logo is there too.
On Metro buses, there are posters that double as games such as I Spy and find the hidden word. The ad is the game, with the safety message below.
“If we just said train tracks are dangerous, people aren’t going to pay attention,” Helfman says. “So the way we did it was to say life is really fun, and the implied part is, don’t kill yourself avoidably and senselessly.”
To kick off the campaign, which launched yesterday, Exit 10 sent out street teams wearing Life Is Fun shirts to the Farragut West and McPherson Square stations, where they handed out thousands of handheld puzzle games to commuters.
The ads will be up for the next couple of months.
