Challenge

Silica dust has been identified as the new asbestos. The dust particles created when cutting products that contain crystalline silica can cause accelerated silicosis, a potentially life threatening illness for workers. For protection, workers must wear Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE) when handling silica based products, but these masks must be fitted professionally and workers can’t have facial hair as it prevents the mask from sealing correctly.

After getting feedback from the industry that employers were finding it hard to communicate this to workers, Worksafe came to us to help educate and drive behavior change around the need to be clean shaven when using RPE.

Solution

To capture the attention of workers and employers, we created ‘Life Shavers’ - a two-minute film featuring three bearded dudes getting shaved at the legendary Benny’s Barber Shop in Christchurch. While receiving their life-saving shave, our workers talk to the barber about why it’s important to be clean shaven to wear RPE and the negative long-term effects that silica dust can cause.

Communicating the heavy messaging in a conversational and visually beautiful way, meant we could better connect with our audience, knowing that they were likely to resonate more with information shared from their peers rather than from industry or government. In addition to the film, we turned our three men into the literal poster boys for being clean shaven, creating a series of beautifully shot posters that could be displayed within workplaces to reinforce the message.

Impact

The film and posters were distributed by WorkSafe amongst manufacturing and construction sector leads for employers to use as a resource for educating their workers, along with also being shared in targeted LinkedIn advertising and sector newsletters.