case study: Water Rest Shade
cause public health, worker rights
organization LOHP/Cal-OSHA
website www.99calor.org
highlights
- The heat safety campaign was so successful in its first year that it captured the attention of the national OSHA office.
- This year, in addition to running again in California, it will appear nationwide.
Heat Safety
Effective advertising is all about reaching your target audience. But how do you reach an audience that works long hours in the field each day, speaks little English, and has low literacy?
This was the challenge Underground and UC Berkeley’s Labor and Occupational Health Program faced in communicating heat safety messages to outdoor workers in California’s Central Valley. So Underground’s creative team spent a day in California’s Central Valley, where we shadowed agricultural workers, visited an ESL night class, and tried to see the world through our target audience’s perspective.
The result was a targeted multimedia campaign for California OSHA in the true sense of the word. Because the campaign could not rely on copy to convey top-line messages, we used photography of real workers resting in the shade, drinking water, and dressing appropriately. The campaign featured features radio and outdoor ads, onsite media, training kits for employers, and a website. Underground paid particular attention to reaching workers on the job, where they would be most responsive to the heat safety message. We created stickers for water coolers, portable toilets, commuter vans, and lunch trucks, and giveaways such as hats, bandanas, zipper-pull thermometers, and clipboards for farm labor contractors. We even produced playing cards with our message to help spread our message into family settings. To ensure that the larger community supported the behavior change message as well, the campaign is featured in posters in Laundromats, convenience stores, community fairs, and other events.