The RNLI, who provide the lifeguards on many of our beaches, launched a campaign on 7th August to make sure people’s fun didn’t end in tragedy.
The Summer of 2018 will go down in history as one of longest, hottest ever. Millions have flocked to the UK’s coast.
The RNLI, who provide the lifeguards on many of our beaches, launched a campaign on 7th August to make sure people’s fun didn’t end in tragedy.
Last year ten times as many men – 99 – died at the UK coast compared to women. The vast majority were aged 16-30 and August is invariably one of the worst month for coastal deaths.
We developed the story with the RNLI, urging young men to share with their mates the charity’s short videos on how to float, so reducing their chances of drowning if they got into difficulty in the sea. To help set it up we undertook comprehensive market research via Opinion Matters of young men’s attitudes to sharing.
Broadcast was the centrepiece of the RNLI’s media outreach. We set up at Fistral Beach in Newquay. BBC Breakfast did three major live hits with the RNLI’s local Lifeguard Supervisor and Luke Dillon, the UK’s leading pro surfer. BBC News Channel took a live via FaceTime, while the BBC’s West of England News Correspondent, Jon Kay, filmed with the mother of a young man who drowned at the beach in 2014. His package ran on the BBC1 Six O’clock News. Together with the RNLI we set up further TV coverage across four BBC and ITV regional news programmes.
At the same time the RNLI spokespeople did 29 radio interviews via our mini portable OB unit on the beach. Each was set up by us and many were live, including into the Today programme and 5 Live Breakfast. Radio1 Newsbeat comprehensively covered the story and limited monitoring yielded at least 17 other stations running the story.
We set up bbc.co.uk and over 20 other sites to run a package featuring the RNLI’s mini campaign videos and our own filmed interviews with the RNLI Lifeguard Supervisor.
Yet again the RNLI were delighted with the coverage.
If the young male audience we were primarily targeting shared the floating message, and this helped fewer subsequently die at the coast, then the work will have been more than worthwhile.