Firevase turns a flower vase into a throwable home fire extinguisher

South Korea's fire-safety rules already demanded that every home carry an extinguisher, yet 58% of households had none and more than 10,000 residential fires broke out each year. Research showed why the law was failing: people found standard extinguishers ugly and complicated, so those who owned one hid it in a cupboard where it could not be seen, reached, or remembered in a panic.

Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance and Cheil Worldwide answered with Firevase, a product that looks like home décor. A hard PVC double-walled vase carries potassium carbonate liquid in its sealed cavity; the inner wall still holds flowers. When thrown at a blaze the vase shatters and the liquid triggers a rapid cooling reaction that suppresses oxygen, tackling the Class A fires that start in homes. Cheil spent roughly 18 months developing it, filed patents, and made the vase red so that even in a panic it reads as safety equipment.

From September 2018 the insurer distributed 100,000 Firevases, prioritising fire-prone homes such as traditional Korean villages, and promoted them with a viral demonstration film, a cinema ad with actor Jung Hae-in, and Facebook give-aways. After the four-month push, 81% of surveyed Koreans said they were more aware of why a home should carry an extinguisher, and the share of households owning one rose 8 percentage points.

The product went on to win a Gold Lotus in the Direct category at ADFEST 2019, and Cheil began producing 200,000 more units — evidence that a safety idea can scale when the design removes the reason people ignored it.