Our group (MAKe Studios) created a fire prevention campaign on behalf of the NVFD (North Vancouver Fire Department). We did this by focusing on key problems that seem to occur a lot in our targetted age group, high school and post-secondary students who have moved out for the first time and are living on their own. The main causes of fires were ones created in the kitchen, by setting off fireworks, and by using flammable materials. Being a part of the targetted audience, my group members and I felt that the best solution we could come up with would be to personify the fire itself. This idea came from the nostalgia of our childhood, watching cartoons every morning. Cartoons are still very prevalent in our lives now as there are adult cartoons such as Rick and Morty that have skyrocketed in popularity in the past couple of years. We paired this concept with a bright and playful colour palette to captivate the eyes of the demographic as we are all about visual aesthetics nowadays.
The character we had come up with is named “Freddy the Fire.” The idea with Freddy is to put viewers in the perspective of seeing Freddy as a friend or someone they would want to protect. The header is set as “Don’t leave him alone”, followed by a line mentioning what bothers Freddy. The language that we used such as r.i.p and pls are little things that we wanted to incorporate since it is how most teenagers and young adults talk. It is a way of seeing this campaign as more relatable because we put the viewers in a familiar setting.
Initially, we had the name “Sparky.” However, we soon found out that the NVFD’s mascot for their fire prevention program in elementary schools was also named Sparky the Dalmation dog. From that, we knew that the name had to have some sort of complexity, to represent a higher age category. The idea of playing with the french word for fire “feu” was interesting, yet not a lot of English names contained those three letters. Although our french attempt failed, we came up with the name Freddy because the sound of “feu” and “Fred” felt similar to a degree but for that, we just thought that it was a memorable name.
It is known that this specific demographic is heavily dependent on our use of our phones. Most of us, including myself use social media as a source for news and updates. Aside from creating three poster advertisements, we saw greater benefits in moving our campaign onto social media. On a platform like Instagram, awareness can be brought up in communities such as North Vancouver but extend to students all over the world. My main task in our team was to create three animation GIFS to use on the NVFD Instagram. We chose to create three Instagram Stories because it is a quick yet effective solution in getting our message across, plus there is a feature where it can constantly show on someone’s Instagram if marked as an advertisement. Working on this project for weeks, I can look back and say that the experience was a big learning journey for me. This was my first time creating a small animation and before this, I had little video editing experience. However, working in a group with Kat and Michelle was a big help. It was nice working with them because we were able to nail down the idea and bring it to life pretty early on and keep the focus on meeting our checkpoint goals. Overall I would rate my performance for this project an 8/10.
Below is my group and I’s final outcome for NVFD’s fire prevention awareness campaign.
I just want to acknowledge that there was a lot more behind the scenes that we put into this project such as brainstorming type copy on the poster, the clay makes of “Freddy”, putting together presentations, and creative briefs.