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Essential Communities

Raising electrical safety awareness with integrated marketing

Essential Energy’s extensive powerline network is long enough to wrap around Australia 13 times. Managing this vast asset includes a commitment to electricity safety and measurable behaviour change.

Each year, Essential Energy aims to reduce risk and raise standards with a public safety strategy. Working closely with their media partners since 2019, we have developed educational campaigns targeting six at risk-groups.

The year-round campaign calendar targets a range of industries, including agriculture, aviation and construction. Electrical safety is also promoted to the broader community, including important messaging around bushfire, storms, power pole collisions and household shocks.

The highly-recognisable, illustrated campaigns embrace new formats such as digital television, programmatic display advertising and social media stories, as well as more traditional channels such as radio and press.

Outputs

  • Multi-channel campaign creative
  • Copywriting and editing
  • Animation and video editing
  • Digital television advertising
  • Digital display advertising
  • Radio advertising
  • Print media advertising
  • Paid and organic social media

Results

  • Interaction — 14x benchmark
  • Safety awareness — 8%↑ in Q2
  • The Drum Award — WINNER

Be Bushfire Safe, Be Storm Safe

The bushfires of 2020 saw great devastation to regional NSW, including the electrical network — 90% of Essential Energy’s assets are in bushfire zones. Reflecting on last year’s A/B testing, we teamed up with Amazon Advertising’s Sizmek to deliver a dynamic creative campaign. Using geolocation and up-to-date emergency warnings, at-risk communities were alerted to ways they could prepare for approaching storms and bushfires.

The 15-week campaign achieved a 38% interaction rate, 14x higher than the Sizmek Ad Suite Benchmark. The campaign won the Drum Award for Digital Advertising APAC in the public sector category.

If you feel a tingle, give us a tingle

The Shocks and Tingles campaign revealed the sinister side of small tingles felt around the home. After editing a script for Australian actor Simon Harvey, we brought the campaign to life with animation. The pre-roll YouTube assets and social media videos performed at 114% of their benchmarks.

A small but powerful new tool for farmers

The 2021 agriculture campaign encouraged farmers to use the Look Up and Live app, which is fully integrated with the Essential Energy network. By repurposing digital assets for cotton, harvest and sowing, and making some small adjustments for their specialised machinery, we were able to reduce design costs by more than 60%. Local and regional press advertising reached those communities in out-of-service rural areas.

Activating safety awareness to aviation incident hot spots

Crop-dusting pilots need to fly under powerlines as low as 6m from the ground, often during poor visibility conditions, so they need to be prepared for an accidental contact. A programmatic display campaign reached pilots that need to stay clear when powerlines are near.

Building a safer workplace for the construction industry

With 116 annual incidents, a campaign to inform construction workers of workplace electrical safety was developed under the guidance of Essential Energy’s health and safety department. Using an animated streetscape, display advertising and social media advertising depicted a range of workplace hazards that require safety procedures and specialist equipment.

What should you do if your car collides with a power pole?

More than half of all general public incidents involve vehicles colliding with street poles, but most of us are completely unaware of how you should respond. This animated campaign included a step-by-step emergency safety procedure, programatically-served at historically dangerous times via video and social media advertising slots.

Measuring behaviour change and reporting safety online

Managing a network with over 1.38 million power poles in a high-risk industry requires a demonstrated commitment to electrical safety. We designed and developed a microsite to share Essential Energy’s safety plan, report incidents and outline the programs and activities undertaken to promote and electrical safety to over 1,500 communities.

A trifecta of media, creative execution and tech to save Aussie lives.

Judge, The Drum Award for Digital Advertising

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