The Victorian Government to develop a campaign that would educate families living in high-risk bushfire areas on the importance of having a fire plan. Despite the gruesome statistics proving the importance of a fire plan, 75% of homes in some of Australia’s most fire-prone areas still didn’t have one. The major challenge was to create a highly engaging campaign that would help improve these startling consistent stats, ultimately encouraging behavioural change within households.

The insight was that while some of us can be apathetic when it comes to matters of our own safety, our attitude changes when it comes to our children.

We knew that if we really wanted to drive a behavioural change in householders, we had to get their children talking about fire safety too. We decided to educate Grade 5 & 6 students from schools in high-risk areas, about the importance of a fire plan. We did this by sending out an educational animation game that was sent to more than 10,000 students, 3,000 which received it on a USB wristband that was packaged like a new toy. Once loaded, the game would ask kids one simple question: What would you want to keep safe from fires?

The kids could select their most cherished items and add them to a list, that once complete would crumple into a customizable character called ‘scrunchie’. The personalised ‘scrunchie’ could then be shared over email to their parents.

Parents could see what was most important to their children. And, in the same email, learn more about how fire safety could protect their family.