Inspired Films on making waves with RNLI water safety campaign
Inspired Films shared the ‘Most innovative or creative use of content’ category at The Drum Awards for Content 2021 with its work for RNLI. Here, the team behind the winning entry reveals the secrets of this successful campaign...
The challenge
Ravi Singh is a 10-year-old boy who survived for an hour when stranded at sea in August 2021 because he had seen the RNLI's #FloatToLive technique on Saving Lives at Sea. In September, the RNLI shared a powerful film of 17-year-old Alfie being rescued when he got into trouble while paddleboarding, because he carried a way to call for help. These inspirational young people knew what to do when they found themselves in trouble, and the actions they took helped them to survive until they could be rescued, helping to save their lives. This showed the importance of teaching vital life saving water safety skills.
The brief was to create some additional, targeted marketing collateral to accompany the launch of the RNLI's Water Safety Education Resources. The film (or films) were initially designed as interactive engagement pieces which not only showcased the new downloadable resources available but also what they can do for teachers and how teachers themselves can use the assets in the most viable way.
The strategy
In Autumn 2020, the RNLI Water Safety Team launched a series of video resources, created to help volunteers, parents, teachers, community partners and youth group leaders to engage young people with essential – and lifesaving – water safety education in schools, at home and youth groups.
Lockdown has seen added pressures on teachers, youth group leaders and parents to deliver water safety education online and in the home. The new videos use the RNLI’s experience of the coastal environment, real life stories & their education expertise to support teachers & youth group leaders to deliver water safety education.
Targeting the age groups 3 - 7 (Lower Primary), 7-11 (Upper Primary) & 11-14 (Lower Secondary), each is filmed from a ‘point-of-view angle’ to give the audience a unique perspective, focusing on a series of scenarios & associated decisions in & around water environments, including swimming in open water and ‘tombstoning’.
Our behaviour change films have not only been focused on student decisions but also on encouraging educators to bring water safety into their classrooms. From filming a lifeboat launch at sunrise, to getting a whole class to demonstrate the float like a star position, we pulled out all the stops to raise awareness of the aims of the RNLI youth education and water safety messaging.
The campaign
Working with key stakeholders from across the RNLI and our partner agency, we based ourselves in Exmouth for a week to create seven point-of-view films to place young people at the heart of dangerous situations, giving them the opportunity to explore the potential consequences of their actions from the safety of the classroom. Every film was fully scripted, with 25 professional child actors recruited from across the South West to star in the film.
We wanted to ensure authenticity and that the right message would be coming across to the target audience, so in the run up to the shoot, we visited a primary school, running a session with educators and students testing the language of the scripts prior to filming.
Interactivity was the key for this project, empowering young people to make key decisions themselves, encouraging group discussions, in a way that was fun, engaging and non-preachy. Everything had to be relatable and authentic, which is why we used real RNLLI Lifeguards to star in the dramatisations, present to camera (in the case of 3-7 year olds) and Lifeboat crews and survivors to provide testimonies of real life incidents and rescues (11-14 year olds)
The RNLI Water Safety Team trialed the resources with several partners throughout the spring and summer 2020, before launching them in Autumn 2020.
The results
Since September of 2020, the RNLI’s water safety education resources pages have seen over 13,000 visitors from the education community. During the spring & summer of 2021 to support those teacher remotely and with the RNLI’s teams unable to visit schools and youth groups in person, the team developed downloadable lessons packs.
Over 950 packs have been downloaded to date and an additional 250 visitors went on to find out more about the RNLI's beach safety campaign and how to keep themselves and their families safe.
As we move towards 2021/22, the Water Safety Team plans to work with partners in identified high risk areas and associated local authorities, to share the films & resources to support the delivery of education packages that would normally have taken place in person or in the classroom environment.
In the spring of 2022, RNLI Teams will also be completing knowledge retention impact evaluation using focusing on the 4 key messages delivered as part of the decision making films. This will be with cohorts of Year 5 (9 and 10 year old) children in primary schools
This project was a winner at The Drum Awards for Content 2021. Click here to find out which of The Drum Awards are currently open for entry.
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