Amber's Warning - a comms case study

Hampshire fire and rescue talk us through one of their most effective campaigns to date – Amber’s warning.

This innovative and cost effective campaign drove down the number of kitchen fires in their target audience by over two thirds.

The campaign also bagged the team shortlistings in the UK Content Awards 2019 and CIPR Pride Awards 2019.

What was the campaign trying to achieve?

The Amber’s warning campaign sought to reduce the number of accidental kitchen fires in Southampton City Council blocks.

Who was your audience?

Incident data highlighted the top three most at risk groups to have a kitchen fire as:

• Elderly people 70+
• Young single people
• Social housing renters

What did you do?

To show the devastating effects of a kitchen fire, and how easily it can happen, we created a powerful case study video.

In the video you hear from firefighters and Amber, the victim of the fire.

25 year old, single mum Amber came home from a night out and feeling peckish she put some chips on her hob to cook. Feeling tired Amber took herself off to bed. The pan of oil to boiled over and ignited her kitchen. Thankfully a neighbour was disturbed in the early hours by Amber’s smoke alarm and dialled 999.

We then promoted the video among the residents of 18 Southampton City Council blocks through a poster campaign.

After targeting the Southampton City Council blocks specifically, we used Amber’s Warning on our social channels to expose our wider audience to this engaging case study with a serious message.

Did it work?

In a word, yes! During the span of the campaign through February and March 2019, there were no incidents in the 18 blocks we targeted. Annual data highlights a reduction in kitchen fires by over two thirds.

The campaign also got some great feedback from Hants Fire staff – which we all know can be very helpful.

“Just wanted to say fantastic video. Really professional and you’ve done a brilliant job with everything about it...including most importantly the message it sends out.

Really well done. We’re all really impressed at Rushmoor. ”

James Dowd, Firefighter, Rushmoor

What tools did you use?

We used mosaic data to profile our target audience.

Meetings with councils, universities and health groups allowed us to really get to know about our audience and ultimately lead to us chossing Amber's story as our casestudy.

Video and posters were the key formats for the campaign. Using posters to promote the video proved to be effective with a captive audience like residents of a block.

We used our social channels to push the message to our wider audience. The video gathered over 76,000 views through this promotion.

Read all about it…

Hampshire’s comms team have kindly allowed us to publish their evaluation for you to read and take inspiration from.

Download the evaluation PDF