Dumb Ways to Die in awards clean sweep

The Metro Trains Melbourne campaign 'Dumb Ways to Die' has cleaned up in round 5 of the 2013 Sirens Awards.

The campaign is about rail safety and went viral late last year. It has currently had over 42 million views on YouTube.

The executive director of McCann, John Mescall said:

“We knew that people didn’t want to hear our message at all. It’s rail safety. Not only do young people not care about safety messages, but we know that they actively tune out these kinds of messages."

“So our idea was to embed our rail safety message into a song: a piece of content so desirable, that our audience would not only willingly listen to it, but if we put it on iTunes, maybe actually pay money to own it. I guess the inspiration was to make a radio ad that was nothing like a radio ad, but a lot more like the content on either side of the ads: the music.”

“The fact that a lot of radio stations around the world have chosen to play the 3 minute version of our ad for free, as part of their music programming, tells us that we may well have pulled it off.”

Judge Rem Bruijn, Creative Director, brainheart said:

“For me ‘Dumb ways to die’ is the idea of the year. It integrates beautifully in any medium, but on radio it’s a belter. The ad that doesn’t sound like an ad."

"It’s a great comedy sketch, a cracking song and an advertising earworm all rolled into one. It’s a ‘likeable’, sharable, sweet-macabre masterclass on the use of dramatic counterpoints, that only gets better with every listen. I could crap on all day about it. It’s that good.”

CEO of CRA, Joan Warner, said:

“This campaign highlights how well radio combines with other media, particularly the internet, to engage the audience and get a message across. It really exemplifies the strength of good radio advertising.”

The 'Dumb Ways to Die' campaign is now in the running to win the best radio ad of the year, to be announced in May.