Helping Victorians plan and prepare for fire.

The Brief

Victorians were dying because they believed they could stay and defend their homes from bushfire. Research showed a dangerous gap between perception and reality: residents either thought fighting fire on their property was a viable strategy, or simply didn't understand the risks they faced. On the worst days, that belief was killing people. The Victorian Government needed to close that gap, not with more warnings as people had been hearing warnings for years.

What was needed as a campaign that changed what Victorians actually believed about fire, and translate that shift into three clear actions: plan, prepare, and leave early.

The added complexity was that the messaging couldn't be one-size-fits-all. Bushfire and grassfire present different risks depending on location, and the correct actions vary accordingly. We had to simplify without oversimplifying.

The Approach

We built the campaign around a single, unflinching idea: when it comes to fire, the facts are black and white. 'The Reasons Are Black & White' stripped away ambiguity and focused on the brutal realities of fire behaviour. No soft messaging, no hedging, just the facts of what fire does to homes, to landscapes, and to people who stay too long, delivered with enough clarity that the only rational response was to plan, prepare, and leave early.

The campaign spanned more than 12 television commercials alongside digital, outdoor, and community engagement. But three elements set it apart from every bushfire campaign that had come before.

Facts of Fire. Produced with the CSIRO Bushfire Behaviour and Risks team, this content series was shot on location at the CSIRO Pyrotron in Canberra. It explored the specific dangers Victorians face each year, including ember attack, spot fires, radiant heat, wind speed, grassfire behaviour, using real science to make abstract risks concrete.

World-first VR experience. Virtual reality had shown real promise in behaviour change research, with simulated experiences generate genuine emotional responses. We took that principle and built something nobody had done before: a VR experience that placed Victorians inside an out-of-control bushfire scenario as it approached their location. You weren't watching someone else's story, you were standing in your own, making decisions as the sky turned orange and the noise became unbearable. The reaction was visceral.

Over 12 TVCs. The scale of the television campaign reflected the scale of the problem. Different messages for different regions, different fire types, different risk profiles, different times in the season, but all anchored to the same truth. The reasons to leave early aren't complicated. They're black and white.

The Outcome

Campaign recall increased 45% compared to the previous bushfire campaign. More than 84% of audiences agreed the advertising was useful and worthwhile. And critically, more than 77% said it made them think about what to do on days of high fire risk. The exact behaviour shift the campaign was designed to achieve.

The Facts of Fire series generated over 7 million impressions and 1.2 million video views in its first few months. The VR experience, even in its soft launch, drew global media attention from the BBC, ABC, Voice of America, and The Telegraph UK.

The campaign earned Gold at the Summit International Creative Awards 2019, and the Facts of Fire series earned Silver. That same year, the work contributed to Top Agency recognition at the Summit Awards, one of only eight agencies worldwide, and the only one in Australia.

The Department of Justice and Regulation described the campaign as imperative in giving Victorians the information they needed to understand risk and stay safe.

I've worked on a lot of campaigns, but this is always one of my favourites. When the work you do might genuinely change whether someone makes it through a fire season, the usual metrics stop mattering quite so much. The number that counts is the one you never see, the family that left early because something finally got through. This is the kind of strategic behaviour change work I now deliver through Pitch Collective - the same thinking, without the traditional agency overhead.

I've written about why campaigns that invest in changing beliefs outperform those chasing quick wins — the Fire Campaign was built on that principle.