Taking a Stormzy approach to cut deliberate fires

Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service have used an innovative approach to refresh their annual summer Flames Aren’t Games campaign.

Each year as temperatures rise typically so do the number of deliberate outdoor fires, increasing the operational demand on firefighters. This year has been no exception with figures showing that during early summer reports of these types of fires had tripled in Staffordshire.

The primary audience, or suspected culprits (to us), for these incidents are teenage boys so the Service needed to find a way to reach out to them. An idea was born to create a spoken word song and video, inspired by the likes of Stormzy and Skeptor. The rapper would tell the story of how their fire starting caused havoc and disaster, leading them to change their ways. The idea was sounded out with local teenagers who agreed that a video would catch their attention far more effectively than any other visual digital marketing material.

Working with a local charity, the Urban Arts Centre in Stoke-on-Trent, and an aspiring artist, the Service produced and recorded the song Flames Aren’t Games.

Although the video is at the heart of the campaign, it is just one element of it and was complemented by ongoing diversionary activities throughout the school summer holidays which were delivered with partner organisations. Additionally young people were encouraged to engage with the campaign and us using a Snapchat Flames Aren’t Games filter, and like and share competitions offering the chance to win football game tickets and theme park tickets, along with regular eye-catching campaign posts intended to deter would be fire starters.

The campaign was also backed by a Prince’s Trust graduate who went on camera to talk about how he used to set fires for fun until he was arrested and how negatively this has affected his life.

To date the video has been viewed over 132,000 times. With the school holidays drawing to a close the final push of the campaign will see more hopeful competition entrants liking a sharing the pinned video post, which will hopefully prompt more views of the video.

- Sarah Davison is Senior Communication Officer at Staffordshire Fire & Rescue