Oompa Loompa song highlights Get Out Stay Out campaign
Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) has used a well-known catchy tune to drive home the Get Out Stay Out fire safety message.
The campaign was launched after research showed 41 per cent of residents that suffered an accidental house fire in Staffordshire didn’t leave their home immediately. More concerning was the fact that 52 per cent said they had tried to tackle the fire themselves.
During a brainstorming session SFRS’s Marketing and Communications team used a technique demonstrated by Alive with Ideas at the FirePro conference; using two random words ‘zebra’ and ‘orange’ to generate lots of creative ideas. The winning idea was a catchy Get Out Stay Out song to the tune of the Oompa Loompa song from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
An accompanying video telling the tale of a man who has to be rescued by firefighters after he doesn’t heed the Get Out Stay Out advice was filmed and to date has been viewed over 177,000 times. The video featured psychedelic effects which were also used on the campaign artwork on posters, buses and bus shelter adverts.
A number of fire victims supported the campaign by allowing us to tell their stories, two of which were particularly hard-hitting; a man scarred for life after tackling a chip pan fire and a woman who lost her life after going into her smoke filled flat. This was captured on CCTV, which secured over 38,000 views on social media. Her family agreed to release her harrowing last moments in support of the campaign, in the hope it would prevent someone else making the same mistake.
These stories attracted significant local, national and regional media coverage (49 news items). However, it is hoped that the real success and benefit will be realised when the post incident questionnaires are re-evaluated in six and 12 months.
Heather Challinor, Head of Marketing and Communications, said: “The Get Out Stay Out campaign was something we really wanted to get across in a creative way; we needed to catch people’s attention by being different and getting them involved in a story in order to save lives"