Westpac creates Rescue Rashies to save lives
After a summer of tragic drownings, Westpac has unveiled a new campaign aimed at saving lives, creating children’s surf rashies with CPR instructions hidden behind a zipper.
The launch of the unique rashies – which are aimed at making CPR instructions available in an emergency in places where CPR posters are not normally found such as beaches, rivers and lakes – is part of the bank’s ongoing 200th anniversary celebrations.
Developed in partnership with children’s first aid charity CPR Kids, the vests will be distributed around Australia by the bank.
The campaign has set the bold goal of putting CPR instructions on every child in Australia.
Wrong headline.
“Agency creates product to try and win award”
https://cprtowel.myshopify.com
A great idea. The bank should take it one step further and drop any copyright and make it creative commons to encourage every brand and manufacturer making kids’ rashies to do the same, as Volvo did with the modern safety belt.
As a mum of 2, this is genius.
How convenient this comes out at Cannes award time. Must be a coincidence. Seriously, this sort of thing makes me very angry. They may claim this shows how much they care about Aussies … but it shows how they don’t care about leveraging human suffering to win another [scam] Cannes award.
Disgraceful … especially when Westpac [I think] sponsor a bunch of Rescue Helicopters, but you can’t win an award for that can you.
For the record, if they did it with zero branding and zero entry into any creative awards, then I’d be applauding.
This is already printed on kids towels at swim schools. Is that where you got the idea?
Also is the zip metal? Wouldn’t work too well with a difib.
Although if it’s just made for a PR award entry then I guess that’s fine.
A) This is probably the most cynical scam I’ve ever seen.
B) It would have been more believable if you’d attempted to solve the initial problem; kids managing to get into pool areas on their own and/or their guardians leaving them unsupervised for even a short amount of time.
A towel is just as helpful as a sign that’s 40m away from drowning victim. Maybe you could jump on your mobile and search for CPR instructions whilst you’re panicking, that would be the fastest.
Do you always have wifi at a beach? On Bondi Beach one of the busiest beaches in Australia I can’t get onto the wifi
I’m ok with this initiative. Westpac has credibility in this space and it could be helpful so I don’t feel any cynicism here. Even if Saatchi’s did it, and it’s not super original. But I do question the zipper. Why hide the instructions? When time is of the essence, why waste it unzipping?
I actually think the genius is the zipper and hidden CPR.
I’m not sure kids would like to wear CPR instruction…It’s seems like that’s the idea right? I would suggest Westpac make these look cooler on the outside and leave the instructions hidden and functional. Very clever idea.
Just out of interest, how many of these were produced?
“Westpac is for all Australians and wants to give something back to the community”
Did Westpac only care about the kids in the case study?
Hi Mumbrella people. Can you do a bit of digging into this. This really feels like a cynical attempt to create a nice video and a couple of garments to win awards. But maybe we are all wrong and it is a high production run piece that isn’t being entered into Cannes. So can you find out the production numbers, distribution, etc?
As a piece there are so many flaws with it that you wouldn’t expect it to get up at ADMA let alone Cannes, but there are some poor juries there so you never know. Saatchi might just be trying their luck. But based on the comments here it’s pretty clear people think it’s a cynical scam. Can you investigate to prove them right or wrong? It’d be great to know. Thanks.
Fuck this makes me depressed about the state of our industry. Awards bait, unoriginal, and doesn’t address the behavior that causes the problem. I’m a numbers person, but even I can see how cynical this is.
Award-bait or not, the idea is strong because it puts the instructions on the people that need saving – ground zero. No issue with the brand being involved given their long term investment in rescue. But don’t believe they should have covered it up with a zipper, or used as much space for all that info. Then they could have just focused on the bit untrained people ask in that situation – how many breaths and compressions? If you’re close enough to unzip it all the other stuff is meaningless anyway.
Of course, Westpac’s biggest mistake was not aligning with a charity for the launch to avoid the flak. Tesco in the UK did something similar but made sure to launch alongside a big NFP. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u.....13e953afcf
Surf Life Saving Australia would have been a great fit…