Aqueduct wins gold at DBA effectiveness awards

Integrated creative agency Aqueduct scooped Gold at the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards 2007 last week, for its internal safety awareness Safety 365 campaign for Network Rail.

The integrated campaign has helped reduce deaths and accidents among workers and dramatically changed attitudes towards safety.

For the first time this year the awards incorporate Gold, Silver and Bronze honours to more accurately reflect the quality of entries.

Not all winners receive the highly exclusive Gold award which Aqueduct's campaign did.

The awards are the only ones to use commercial data as a key-judging criteria to capture the effectiveness of campaigns.

Aqueduct's hugely successful Safety 365 safety brand is achieving more than double the approval rates expected for even high-performing consumer campaigns and has changed the way two out of three staff members think about safety.

Since the campaign's launch in March 2005, the number of fatalities on the UK's tracks has dropped dramatically to one, compared to 30 in the ten years preceding the campaign.

Among the maintenance workforce 80 per cent of staff recall seeing each of the Safety 365 campaigns.

More than 70 per cent of staff feel that safety communications have changed the way they think about safety and 74 per cent of safety briefers feel safety issues are better communicated than two years ago.

Now, 92 per cent of staff say they are responsible for performing their job safely.

The judging panel, chaired by Lord Bilimoria CBE, CEO of Cobra Beer, described Safety 365 as an "inspiring project with entirely admirable objectives delivered with humour".

He added: "The panel emphasised the 'enormous standout', 'individual design' and 'great use of media mix' - it's important to get the safety message across and they really are, it's a very strong safety message and very well done".

Aqueduct MD Rob Oubridge said: "We are very pleased, for both the client and the team that has developed and deployed this campaign, to win such a credible and well-recognised award.

"We set out to be excellent and different and this achievement helps prove we are just this.

"Our raison d'etre, before we even started the agency, was to apply advertising standard work to everything we do.

"More importantly, of course, is the effectiveness of the campaign - it shows that the benefits of a properly conceived, well-designed and executed campaign, though sadly still not the norm in 'internal' communications, can have massively beneficial effects.

"The 365 campaign has already proved itself in the field by contributing to a reduction in the number of accidents and deaths and has successfully changed behaviour in terms of safe working practices.

"All in all, it has been an outstanding success".

The integrated campaign, which features posters, video, briefings, pocket cards, safety trucks, drinks holders and other channels and continues to roll out for Network Rail, is aimed at the company's 32,000 staff and around 100,000 contracted workers.

In its second phase, launching this month, a portal will provide an online safety resource aimed at around 3,000 safety briefers within Network Rail and other rail industry companies, including contractors and train and freight-operating companies.

The website will be instrumental in helping Network Rail deliver improved workforce safety both among its own staff and the wider rail community.

It aims to deliver many secondary benefits to the company and the industry, including aiding Network Rail in becoming a world-class organisation, to build a safety-aware interactive community within the rail industry and to harness online technologies as a resource.

The DBA Award Design Business Association exists to promote professional excellence through productive partnerships between commerce and the design industry to champion effective design that improves the quality of people's lives.

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