One Message to Give Them All: Unifying Your Campaign With Integrated Marketing

Usually, when a government entity has to issue a public safety message, it falls back on the tried and tested method of do’s and don’ts. TV ads and wall posters abound everywhere telling people not to do something in order to be safe.

Melbourne Metro though, had other plans.

In 2012, Melbourne Metro needed to promote rail safety but it also wanted the public to pay attention to the message and take it seriously. “Be careful while you cross the rails,” just didn’t seem to be striking enough for them.

So instead, they went ahead and created a phenomenon.

Melbourne Metro turned to entertainment to issue the public safety message. In November 2012, the Metro’s agency wrote a song entitled, “Dumb Ways to Die,” which listed, well, multiple dumb ways to die. From poking a bear, to popping pills past their expiration date to selling both your kidneys on the internet, the lyrics were funny and the song, incredibly catchy. It ended in the climax listing the dumb ways to die when it comes to trains.

The song launched via iTunes, where within 24 hours, it reached the top 10 chart. What catapulted it to its huge success is the animated video the Metro published on YouTube 2 days later, featuring characters like Numpty, Hapless, Dippy, and others, each of whom represented the multiple dumb ways to die.

The video was viewed 2.5 million times within the first 48 hours. Within 2 weeks, it had reached 30 million views. As of today, it has 207 million views. 

The campaign then took on a life of its own. A dedicated Tumblr page was created to accompany the campaign and it went viral. It became the most shared video on the internet in 2012. Radio stations started to play the song for free. Then came the train station and public posters and billboards, culminating in a children’s book and a website where people could make the pledge to be safe around trains. 

The campaign ensured user participation through a smartphone app as well, which had 82 funny and free games where players could collect the characters one by one, while reinforcing the need to be safe in a train station.

All arms of the campaign directed people to the website to make the pledge, ensuring that this campaign was not your run-of-the-mill public safety announcement. It was a campaign tuned to change people’s behavior.

This happened in 2012. Why are we discussing this now after almost a decade? We are doing so because this is one of the biggest real-life examples of effective integrated marketing.  

Defining Integrated Marketing

Integrated marketing is the process of spreading a uniform message through all your digital and physical channels. It is the most effective means to align your brand message while ensuring that it reaches all your target audiences.

Melbourne Metro had one simple message. Be careful around a train station. But this simple message was disseminated through multiple channels in multiple formats, each format suiting each of these channels – a song on the radio, a video on YouTube, a game on a smartphone, a pledge on a website. 

By distributing their one message through a variety of channels, Melbourne Metro reached a wider audience and what more, ensured that they stayed on top of everyone’s minds for a while – as is proven by the song becoming one of the top 10 in iTunes and the video garnering so many views.

“Integrated marketing across 4+ channels outperform single or dual-channel campaigns by 300%.”

This number comes from Gartner and it clearly states that integrated marketing is a chance you do not want to let go.

Ensuring a Successful Integrated Marketing    

An integrated marketing campaign seems like a Herculean task, taking into account the many digital channels of today. But it doesn’t have to be. When you get the basics right, everything else falls into place.

Everyone has to be on the same page

If you have digital and physical channels of marketing, ensure that everyone is on the same page. All stakeholders must have a clear idea of what the brand is trying to communicate. Once the marketing message is clear, different channels can have different approaches to distribute the message.

And that’s a good thing. Even if you have multiple stories, the message is consistent. And consistency is important to win the audience’s trust.

Create a holy book of strategy

Since the whole point of integrated marketing is unified messaging, it’s crucial that you get as much clarity as you can on your objectives and goals. A document or a booklet that gives a comprehensive idea about the goals, objectives, marketing message, and expected ROI will help all stakeholders to move towards the same goal.

This document or booklet can act as your one true core of your campaign.

Draw up a brand book

Even though there will be multiple channels engaged in your marketing campaign, it’s essential there’s visual and verbal uniformity in order to respect your brand identity. Create clear visual and verbal identities for the campaign like fonts, color palettes, taglines, special logos and other entities so that all your channels carry consistent branding.

Integrated Marketing is the Future

The Melbourne Metro campaign was executed in 2012. Time has flown by since then and digital channels have compounded. With each digital channel having its own demographic and content uniqueness, it becomes all the more important that your campaign speaks the same language in multiple channels.

This level of consistency engenders trust in the audience while holding their attention because your message will be omnipresent. Meet your audience where they are and speak the language that they do. Multiple channels and multiple messaging for one simple outcome will essentially become a Tower of Babel. So unify your message and get your campaign out. 

Marketing is ultimately a game of win or lose. And to misquote the Melbourne Metro song, messing that up will be one of the dumbest ways to lose.

Does integrated marketing seem like a lot of work to do? Getting support from a digital marketing firm who knows the game inside out will be a smart thing to do. And Econz Digital can help. Get in touch with us and we’ll sit down and come up with an integrated marketing plan for you that rivals Melbourne Metro.