On the face of it, keeping a fire-breathing dragon in a wooden house wouldn’t seem to be the most sensible idea ever – but it worked very well for Hollywood’s DreamWorks animation studio.
They were the people who developed How to Train Your Dragon, the story of a Viking community and its pet dragons.
So successful was the film that it was soon followed by How to Train Your Dragon 2, and on the back of that the Government’s Department for Communities and Local Government teamed up with the studio to launch an innovative partnership between the second film and the award-winning Fire Kills campaign.
The campaign used lots of ways encourages families to test their smoke alarms on the first day of every month, and targets audiences of all ages. We’d like to add our weight to that campaign. The Government’s picture, associated with this blog, shows just how important it is. That’s why we’d like to keep the ball rolling with a reminder that checking smoke alarms is a simple but vital task that could save the lives of you, your children, and elderly relatives.
The DreamWorks film, released through 20th Century Fox, presented a powerful opportunity for collaboration, using the power of the film’s brand to reach families and improve public safety. Producers allowed use of selected images and characters from the film, and arranged for special artwork to be commissioned. You can see some of the artwork at the Fire Kills Facebook page. This main post on this page reached a million people, so it was clearly a great success.
Fire Services Minister Penny Mordaunt said: “The Fire Kills campaign’s collaboration with ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ was a brilliant way to spread this life-saving public safety message and reach a wider audience through partnership.
“The plot of the film and familiarity of its characters was too good an opportunity to miss, given our campaign objective of persuading families to be more fire safe by regularly testing their smoke alarms.
“The power of young people’s influence is well known as being effective in getting parents to change their behaviour. ‘How to train your family’ was the perfect way to tie the two together.”
You can join in the Fire Kills campaign on Twitter. Use #ticktocktest to be part of it.