IN BOOMING ALBERTA, THE RISING NUMBER OF POWER LINE SAFETY INCIDENTS RESULTING IN WORKPLACE INJURIES BROUGHT ALBERTA’S UTILITIES, THE PROVINCE AND US TOGETHER TO ASK – AND ANSWER – A CRITICAL QUESTION; “WHERE’S THE LINE?”
JUST - Where's The Line?
Where's The Line - Gameshow
Where's The Line - Hidden Danger
Where's The Line? - Today
THE CHALLENGE
In the Alberta boom years that began in 2003, the rapid pace of growth and development all across the province was also coinciding with an alarming increase in workplace
incidents involving contact with overhead or buried power lines. A rise in ‘reported’ powerline-contact incidents, typically only a fraction of those that go unreported, suggested that the situation - if left unaddressed – would only go from bad to worse. While Alberta’s electrical utilities had long undertaken their own individual public and workplace-safety messaging, it had become obvious that there was need for a more coordinated effort by the province’s utility providers and the government to address attitudes and behaviours of a broader workplace audience operating near and around power lines.
THE SOLUTION
Collectively focus on those most at risk and empower them with a simple, ‘actionable’ safety tool.
By addressing worker and workplace attitudes first, the goal was to affect frontline behaviour by focusing messaging against those accounting for the majority of powerline-contact incidents, primarily drivers/operators of construction and excavating equipment, rig haulers and agricultural equipment operators. Strategic success hinged on concentrating all of the member-utility / participants efforts under a single unified ‘brand message’ and deploying it when and where it was most likely to be meaningful and relevant to the target.
“WHERE’S THE LINE?” is both brand Identity and call-to-action, providing the singular cohesive-message platform upon which timely and effective reminders can be delivered to those responsible for their own workplace safety – or that of their workers. A finely -tuned media strategy targets for maximum audience exposure and retention through the combination of engaging, audience-relevant creative and ‘in-the-moment’ media delivery.
THE RESULTS
In a short six-month measurement period after launching, recall of the Joint Utility Safety Team’s ‘WHERE’S THE LINE?’ campaign registered at 59% among target-audience members. Momentum and broad stakeholder-audience awareness and interest continues to build with other provinces, safety organizations and jurisdictions throughout North America requesting permission to utilize JUST’s advertising, communications and growing inventory of educational materials. Ongoing IPSOS Reid tracking of audience awareness levels and message-recall continues to show favourable awareness levels among both primary and secondary-audience members. Recognition of the ‘WHERE’S THE LINE’ brand is in line with industry highs. In addition, audience awareness and retention of specific ‘operator-targeted’ safety messaging such as “ 7 Meters = Safe’ continues to increase. As well, cross-industry partnerships like that between JUST and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to co-develop mandatory certification programs are helping to build the industry-specific education and safety-training components required for long-term incident-reduction success.