ScottishPower safety campaign is UK’s best

Nov. 1, 2011 - PRLog -- The ‘It Matters’ campaign was recognised with a top award at the annual Marketing Design Awards yesterday.

The campaign, which won in the Energy and Utilities category, used tongue-in-cheek copy and a mixture of hard hitting & light hearted visuals to emphasise the importance of health and safety messages. It helped the energy company to reduce sickness absence by 22% and lost time accidents by 60% and to save £2.5million.

ScottishPower commissioned Good Creative, a Glasgow-based design agency, to develop a single brand and an enduring campaign that would deliver internal health and safety messages across the group. The company felt previous campaigns had been inconsistent and poorly executed and that staff had become disengaged from internal communications messages.

ScottishPower is one of the UK’s largest energy suppliers, comprising a number of divisions – including SP Energy Retail, SP Energy Wholesale and SP Energy Networks – each of which operates autonomously and had created its own ‘brand’ to deliver health and safety messages.

There was a lack of consistency and, as a result, the group’s health and safety performance was good but static. Recognising that the safety and wellbeing of its staff was paramount, the group asked Good to create a brand platform that would work across all of its divisions, to improve key health and safety statistics, to improve brand recollection and to create a cost-effective, long lasting campaign.

The ‘It Matters’ campaign went live in May 2009 with a budget of £60,000. Using a series of simple visuals,  it emphasised the message that health and safety issues affected the lives of all employees at all times, from making a cup to tea, to walking to work, driving a car or wiring a plug.

While the safety side of the campaign contained a hard-hitting message about workplace dangers, the important health message was transmitted in a more light hearted waythat appealed to the workforce .  

Doug Wilson, ScottishPower’s Health & Safety Director, said: “The impact of the ‘It Matters’ campaign on our health and safety culture has been positive and sustaining. The extent to which we have further educated, what I know to be a tough audience, is nothing short of remarkable.”

Good was also successful in the Interactive and Digital category, being highly commended for devising a successful social media and branding campaign for Buchanan Galleries, a shopping complex in the centre of Glasgow, owned by Land Securities.

The accolades follow successes for Good earlier this year in the Design Business Association’s annual Design Effectiveness Awards which elevated Good to third position in the DBA’s rankings of the UK’s most effective design consultancies.  

The successes reflect Good’s versatility and energy, according to founding co-director Keith Forbes, who said: “These awards show our ability to work across a range of disciplines and to produce original, effective results that deliver a positive impact on our clients’ businesses.

“At the heart of our philosophy is the belief that the best results come from honing a single, brilliant idea whether that’s in internal communications, branding, packaging, digital or whatever.

“While it is pleasing to be recognised for excellence by industry experts, the real judges are our clients for whom our work is effective and consistently exceeds their expectations.”

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Visit www.good-creative.com

The Marketing Design Awards, organised by Marketing magazine, are open to organisations of all sizes that can demonstrate how use of design has contributed to their marketing planning and implementation and impacted on their brand performance and business success.

Entries are sought from brand consultancies, independent designers, design consultancies, in-house design departments, advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing and other marketing services agencies, communications agencies, web design and development companies and manufacturers.

The awards are divided into 23 categories - 12 in the product sector and 11 for design use – with an overall Marketing Design Award presented to the best entry, selected by an independent jury.