Power lines can kill you and that giant lizard

Giant-monster send-ups rarely fail to please, and this Canadian power-line safety pitch by Wonder Communications (video posted below) is no exception. The message: No matter how invincible you think you are, live wires can kill you. They're more likely to do so, of course, if you're a laser-shooting dinosaur who can actually reach overhead power lines. (Actually, the campaign is aimed at contractors who use tall equipment that could get snared in such cables.) Note how the hardhats, instead of trying to help out, just stand around and gawk at the creature's rampage. Typical union types. And we're clearly dealing with an inadequate defense plan here: Instead of tanks and planes, a couple of cops try to hold off the prehistoric fury with police specials! They're lucky the lizard lumbered into the lines, or they'd all be extinct. Via Ads of the World.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on December 21, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Canada, Gianatasio, Wonder Communications, Workplace safety

The less said of mime advertising the better

If a mime falls gravely wounded in the kitchen or on the factory floor, would anybody hear? Or care? The answer to first question is no, since mimes are silent. And the likely answer to the second makes one wonder why the Worker Compensation Board of Nova Scotia chose mimes in the first place for its new campaign warning people that keeping quiet about safety issues at the workplace isn't such a good idea. Still, the posters, like the annoying mimes themselves, do demand attention. The mime in the factory ad looks so sad, like he's lost a thumb in one of those packages passing on the conveyor belt. There's also a TV component. "Neck Brace" looks like it was shot in the AdFreak office. We have that kind of fun here every day. I can't wait to see how the agency, Extremegroup in Halifax, translates the campaign to radio. That won't be easy. Via Ads of the World.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on June 4, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Canada, Extremegroup, Gianatasio, PSAs, Workplace safety

The workplace is no safer down in Australia

Obviously inspired by last year's disturbing workplace-safety ads from Canada, Australia's WorkSafe Victoria has begun airing its own graphic depictions of on-the-job gore. There's a predictably horrific nailgun incident, a bagel-slicer bloodbath and (just like Canada's campaign) a kitchen worker who gets boiled alive. While it's not quite as jarring as when we saw this stuff the first time around, the campaign is still a compelling way to get the attention of young workers who are most at risk for severe workplace injury. According to Australian newspaper The Age, the WorkSafe spots will air in two versions—a PG cut for earlier timeslots and a Dario Argento version to be shown after 8:30 p.m.

—Posted by David Griner

Published on October 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Freaky, Griner, PSAs, Workplace safety

If Sam Raimi had made forklift safety videos

Leave it to the Germans to outdo the Canadian workplace advisories with clockwork efficiency, as Klaus the Forklift Operator goes on an accidental rampage that would put Evil Dead fans off their breakfast. It may also rank as the most inauspicious first day at work of all time. The gruesomeness really kicks in around the five-minute mark. Enjoy! (Read more about the short film here. Apparently some companies have actually used it as a training video.)

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Published on December 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Kiefaber, Workplace safety

Canadian workplace-safety ads frighten kids

Turns out Americans weren’t the only ones grossed out by those explicit Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario ads. (We wrote about them here.) Canadians were also uncomfortable, as perhaps we should have expected. In fact, the city of Windsor “is refusing to place WSIB’s print ads in bus shelters, citing their ‘disturbing’ nature and gory images.” They specifically object to a gory ad in which a construction worker has been impaled by an oversized forklift operation manual, claiming that it would frighten children. And it probably would. But they don’t have to work in factories yet, so they’re fine. At least the ads don’t suggest that workplace accidents will give them genital herpes.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Published on December 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Filed under Kiefaber, Workplace safety