Metro's 2012 'Dumb Ways to Die' turned rail safety into the most-shared PSA ever

In November 2012 Metro Trains Melbourne and McCann Melbourne released 'Dumb Ways to Die', a three-minute animated song in which cute blobs die from ridiculous mistakes — poking a grizzly bear, selling both kidneys online — before landing the point: dying around trains is the dumbest way to die. The music was written with members of Australian bands The Cat Empire and Tinpan Orange.

The audience problem was that 13–25-year-olds actively tuned out rail-safety lectures. As McCann's John Mescall put it, the team knew young people didn't want the message at all, so the idea was to make something 'nothing like a radio ad' and much more like the music around it. The campaign therefore launched as a song-first event across video, iTunes, radio, outdoor and a game.

The numbers followed the sharing: within 24 hours the song was in the top 10 on Australian iTunes, the video reached 28 million YouTube views in a fortnight and over 50 million within months, and the song charted in 28 countries. Metro reported a more than 30% reduction in near-miss accidents in the first three months and a 21% drop in accidents and deaths, and the campaign won 27 Cannes Lions including a record five Grand Prix.

The long tail was even bigger: Dumb Ways to Die became the most-awarded campaign in Cannes history and grew into a franchise — five games passed 350 million downloads, the YouTube channel approached half a billion views by the tenth anniversary, and Metro said the campaign generated more than 120 million personal pledges to be safe around trains.