Heavenly Media and Campus Group
Protecting young people from the dangers of the silent killer
Our project at a glance
- GDN partners: Cadent, Northern Gas Networks, SGN, Wales & West Utilities
- Strategic priority area: Carbon monoxide awareness
- Engagement target: 200,000 households
- Duration: October 2022 to December 2023
- SGN investment: £108,519.42 over 14 months
- Forecast SROI: £12.84
It’s really good to see content creators promoting safety and health instead of promoting trash games that let’s be honest no one is going to play.
@log552k7 on TikTok
Why we’re working together
Young people are at greater risk of carbon monoxide harm than other age groups.
Our 2020 research into gas and CO safety uncovered that nearly half of 16 to 24-year-olds incorrectly thought CO had a smell. This age group was also far less likely to have a working audible CO alarm or think it is important to have gas appliances annually serviced.
Building on the success of a previous pilot programme we developed with Campus Group to embed student CO safety ambassadors in university campuses within our network area, and a pilot Wales & West Utilities ran using computer gaming as a theme to engage this target audience through digital marketing, we’re jointly leading a new collaborative campaign with the other gas networks to target this hard-to-reach group nationally with CO safety advice.
During the first phase of our programme, our collaborative Game Over campaign delivered 4.5 million opportunities for young people to see our CO awareness video and audio ads.
We know that not all customers who see or hear one of our campaign assets or adverts will be receptive to the information, so as gas networks we have agreed a 3% engagement rate be applied to the total campaign reach for all our CO awareness campaign activity.
In the first phase, our campaign reached 3,047,837 people with a total ‘engaged’ reach of 91,435. Of those 91,435 young people the campaign has reached nationally, 25,339 were in our network area.
The targeted social media videos – which show two online gamers, one of whom is impacted by CO poisoning – were watched in full 756,000 times on Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube.
We applied our learning from the first phase of our campaign to shape the second phase activity. This included only running the 15-second version of our film on social media, as well as constantly reviewing and redeploying the budget across social platforms where we achieved the strongest results.
We reached a further 5,339,991 people nationally in the second phase of our campaign. Applying the same 3% engagement rate from phase one, we can conclude our campaign reached an additional 160,200 young people in its second phase, of which 42,948 young people were within our network area.
Over the course of the 14-month programme, we reached 2,140,254 young people in our network area with carbon monoxide safety advice, which equates to 64,208 young people after applying the 3% engagement rate.
Project objectives
- Delivering an effective CO awareness campaign targeted at young people aged 16 to 25
- Supporting the enduring digital campaign with on-campus engagement activity
How we’re working together
Multi-channel CO awareness campaign
Our Game Over campaign uses a gaming theme to target young people with 'silent killer' CO awareness messaging through 15 and 30-second audio and video adverts. Our multi-channel approach sees the ads placed across social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok, streaming services ITVX, All 4 and Spotify, and digital radio via DAX and Octave Audio. Our advertising activity is supported by a standalone Game Over microsite, linked to our websites, which is targeted at young people and covers where CO comes from, the symptoms of CO poisoning, how to stay safe and the gas emergency number.
Social media influencers
Five social media influencers were recruited to amplify our activity and spread the message on the dangers of CO poisoning on Instagram and TikTok, increasing the reach to females in this age group.
Student ambassadors
Alongside our digital campaign, we recruited student ambassadors from 16 universities across England, Scotland and Wales to run events and share campaign content and merchandise.
University campus tour
We're also supplementing the student ambassador activity with a bespoke on-campus retro arcade game, based on our Game Over concept. The arcade tour has visited five university campuses across all the GDN areas to date.
As well as generating mass awareness (1.7 million impressions) from more traditional campus media channels, by utilising a combination of live events, student ambassadors and nano-influencers we’ve been able to ensure a deeper level of peer-to-peer education and engagement across 16 key universities – and crucially – communicate an important, serious message in a means that is memorable, unique and relevant to this demographic.