KiwiRail highlight rail safety via DDB Group

Following twice as many incidents involving trains in the past year, KiwiRail, TrackSAFE and DDB Group Aotearoa have harnessed the power of superstition to encourage safer behaviour around level crossings in an integrated campaign for Rail Safety Week (8-14 August).

Rather than simply telling people to expect trains, or warning about the dangers of making poor decisions, the Rail Safety Week campaign attempted something new to get people looking left and right at level crossings – promoting a superstition that stated that before crossing rail tracks, one should briefly ‘Blow to the left and to the right, for safe travels’.

But before TrackSAFE and KiwiRail could promote such a thing, DDB Group and Mango Aotearoa worked together to establish a back story – leveraging media, digital, outdoor, social media and influencer partnerships.

This began – completely unbranded – in all of the places you’d expect to find evidence of a rail superstition, such as Reddit forums, train blogs, travel blogs, and Wikipedia.

Next, influencers and media personalities were engaged to spread the word by creating content about their own superstitious behaviours – including the blow left and right behaviour – as part of their content in the lead up to Rail Safety Week.

Finally, KiwiRail and TrackSAFE joined the conversation and promoted this new behaviour across all of their channels during Rail Safety Week.

Gary Steele, DDB Aotearoa Chief Creative Officer, says the unique campaign was designed to get people to think differently about safety. 

“The traditional ‘Look left, look right’ message wasn’t turning heads and KiwiRail and the TrackSAFE team were willing to try something unconventional if it meant saving lives,” he says.

“The Rail Ritual campaign is a playful way to get a serious message across, promoting a new superstition that instils safe behaviour. While most superstitions don’t actually deliver real benefits, this one might just save lives.”

Megan Drayton, TrackSAFE NZ Foundation Manager, said people needed to take more care around railway lines and this year’s campaign was a new way to get the message across.  

“It was definitely unconventional but we needed to do something different to grab people’s attention,” says Drayton.

“We wanted people to engage with rail safety in a new way, and harnessing the power of superstition has done just that. Whether people are superstitious or not, the campaign has got people thinking about the risks, and what they need to do to stay safe.” 

Check out the video here and for more information on the campaign, click here: https://www.tracksafe.co.nz/safety/campaigns/a-rail-safety-superstition

Client credits:

Acting GGM Communications Kiwirail: Nigel Wilson

Community Engagement Manager Kiwirail: Jane Sherriff

Community Engagement Advisor Kiwirail: Emma Kenton-Todd

Foundation Manager TrackSAFE: Megan Drayton

Agency credits:

Group Chief Creative Officer: Matty Burton

Chief Creative Officer: Gary Steele

Creative Director: Brett Colliver and Mike Felix

Senior Art Director: Sarsha Drakeford

Senior Copywriter: Lizzie Baird

Illustrator: Timothy Wilde

Business Partner: Lucy Paykel

Senior Account Manager: Bambi Villacruz

Head of Digital and Social (Mango): Zoe Virtue

Senior Account Manager (Mango): Emma Hopgood

Planner: Natassja Cox

Agency Producer: Sheetal Pradhan and Julz Lane

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