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Ontario’s Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) says employees can “never be too safe” in its latest marketing campaign, promoting proper safety equipment, training and safer working environments.
For the last two years, the WSIB has relied on shock value to push workplace safety with graphic ads showing deaths and horrific workplace accidents, but it is not so this year.
“You can make people immune to things if you have too much violence, and the point is, we’re about prevention,” said Steve Mahoney, WSIB chair. “So it was my view that it was time to show how these things can be prevented.”
This year’s campaign from DraftFCB includes two 30-second TV commercials, cinema spots, print, transit shelter ads, online ads and the site Prevent-It.ca.
The TV spots follow workplace employees up until the point of an accident—similar to last year’s TV ads—but at the last minute the proper actions are taken to avert the accident. The commercials end with the tag line: “You Can Never Be Too Safe—Use proper safety equipment. Demand proper training. Refuse unsafe work.”
“[Viewers’] hearts are in their mouth when they watch it because they’re expecting the worst, but the worst doesn’t happen, the best happens,” said Mahoney. “They prevent the incident from hurting anybody.”
Although the print ads use the same tag line, they have a more humorous flavour with employees taking extraordinary precautions to avoid workplace incidents. For instance, in one ad, a chef is wearing rubber gloves and a welding mask to torch the top of crème br<0x00FB>lée. In addition to English and French, the ads will run in Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Punjabi, Spanish and Tamil.
All of the creative directs the audience to Prevent-It.ca ,where they can view the ads and learn more about workplace rights and responsibilities.
The campaign launched this week and runs until Dec. 14.
