At the end of September, Greg Davies, the award winning comedian and Mr Gilbert in The Inbetweeners, launched National Grid’s 2010 campaign to increase students’ awareness of Carbon Monoxide poisoning and gas safety – timed to coincide with the beginning of the new university year.
The campaign builds upon our highly successful work 12 months ago, fronted by another legend in students' eyes, Alan Fletcher, Neighbours' Dr Karl Kennedy. Once again, driving major numbers of students to the National Grid Student Union on Facebook is our core objective.
We sent former teacher Greg back to a student house, filming him in a series of comic situations with four real university students. During the day, Greg woke up a snoozy student with a marginally offensive ballad, advised them on improving their diets and drinking habits (recommending bananas and neat gin respectively) and even took their limited cash from them in a poker game. All in the name of comedy.
In three of the eight short videos, which are being released two per week throughout October, Greg highlighted the key CO and gas safety issues that students need be aware of in their rented accommodation. But crucially he did so in a comic way.
On launch day, Greg and Sue Hughes Payne from National Grid took part in 15 radio interviews, including a live feature slot on talkSPORT's Hawksbee & Jacobs show, Sky News Radio, BBC Asian Network, the Big City Network, Kiss, Kerrang and Magic 105.3.
Radio and online competitions are further driving traffic, so too is placing a serious safety video feature on relevant web sites.
In a week since launch, the National Grid Student Union page on Facebook has already attracted over 600 fans and over 3,000 people have watched the videos on YouTube alone.
Greg said: “Going back to the student house for a day was a genuinely disgusting experience. But as you’ll see in the videos, I wanted to single-handedly save the lives of students.”
Join in the fun on ‘National Grid Student Union’ on Facebook.