I must preface this post  with a story about  my personal experience for two reasons. Firstly to demonstrate the reason behind my emotional reaction towards the ads and secondly to prove my awareness of the seriousness of the underlying issue. I’m not simply putting my head in the sand and stomping my feet because I’ve seen something I find to be unpleasant.

In primary school a friends father was killed at work. We played basketball together so  our families were not what you would call close yet did spend a bit of time together. The fact that our Dads worked together made it more distressing for me but it wasn’t until a few months later, when snooping through Dads car, I found something I was never meant to read, that I really got shaken up by the whole experience. I can still remember the day pretty clearly. I was sitting in the backseat of Dad’s patrol waiting for him to come out of the house as we were going down the street. Not expecting him to be taking so long, I got bored quickly, no car keys, no radio. I began searching through the car to keep myself occupied, probably not looking for anything just being a snoop. I’d noticed a white envelope sitting under his seat. ‘Weird, Dad keeps his mail in the glove box’ I remember thinking.

I’d seen ‘private and confidential’ on letter before but ‘FOR YOUR EYES ONLY’ was something new to me and sounded like something out of James Bond. Naturally I opened it as it had already been opened so my chance of getting caught were slim.
Out of respect, I won’t be going into the details of what I read, but I felt sick. Not only because of the graphic information that was so unemotionally printed in black and white in front of me but also because I’d found out my Dad was there. Proximity to the accident and all the other details meant nothing to me, I stuffed the paper back in it’s envelope and returned it to where I’d found it but the seed had been planted. It could’ve been my Dad.

We first starting seeing these ads around 2 years ago from what I’ve found online. They are brilliantly made and thought out. I find  they are far more effective than some from overseas (particularly the US) where they’ve chosen a more graphic style of getting their point across, almost Tarantino-esq. If you were to look at the campaign, in a completely objective way and totally disregarded the anxiety, that I’m sure these ads cause people who have been closely affected by an incident at work, then one could argue that they are probably one of the most effective piece of advertising seen on television. You only have to look at the comments on the YouTube videos from people in the health and safety industry, who are strong supporters of them. It forces everybody in the work force to be aware of the safety issues they come across day-to-day and perhaps don’t give enough respect to, but for how long? I was unable to find any statistics on the internet to give evidence of a drop in work place accidents, but I would be hugely interested to: Workcover and the increase in occupational health and safety officers etc.

I sat in a management meeting at an old workplace around 18 months ago where the OH&S officer explained that the money the business would save by cutting the amount of workplace incidents in half was equivalent to a whole years revenue at one of their restaurants which brings me to my final opinion on the matter.

The general public has all been shocked now and I’m sure three years on there are a lot of people who are simply flicking the channel when these ads come on. Or like myself getting angry and feeling slightly emotionally attacked. Are they going to remember them the following day at work or simply block them out? Yes, the reason for being safe at work is NOT at work at all. I think by following that rule we can also jump to the conclusion that being negatively forced into thinking about work safety at home, won’t necessarily eventuate to a change of behaviour, the next day at work. More often than not  we would find that because of the negative imagery the ads place in people’s brains, they aren’t going to carry the information around with them, especially when you factor in all the distractions they will experience before they set foot at work the next day. Whereas someone who is reliving their own experience when viewing, will remember them probably for more than a day and I can tell you right now that they are most likely already pretty cautious  at work.

Show these ads at work where they have some relevance and where people aren’t becoming immune to them. At least that way you can guarantee that the point will get across in a way that relates directly to the industry people are working in.