St John Ambulance VIC campaign via Town Square delivers serious message with a comical twist
St John Ambulance Victoria has launched the third instalment of its ‘Know First Aid’ platform with a new campaign from Melbourne independent creative agency, Town Square, that uses humour to drive awareness of a seriously unfunny subject – sudden cardiac arrest.
The ‘Do You Live with a Paramedic?’ campaign shines a light on the brutal reality that after a sudden cardiac arrest, you have just ten minutes to get help before it’s too late. With the average ambulance response time in Victoria sitting at 15 minutes, the campaign reframes defibrillators as an essential first line of defence, particularly in the home, where 78% of cardiac arrests occur in the latest VACAR report.
The first Town Square campaign ‘Does Anyone Know First Aid?’ switched the focus from victim to responder, calling on Victorians to ask themselves what they would do in an emergency. In the second iteration, ‘If It Happens at Home’ no people were featured at all, instead viewers were invited to fill in the devastating blanks. In its latest work, ‘Do you live with a paramedic?’, comedy is used as a way to disarm audiences.
Town Square worked with comedy production house Haven’t You Done Well, the creative team behind Aunty Donna, to lean into sitcom-style humour through a series of skits featuring a third-wheeling paramedic housemate. The tongue-in-cheek premise asks Australians the rhetorical question: Do you live with a paramedic? If not, the safest answer is to buy a defibrillator.
Says Brendan Day, executive creative director at Town Square: “Cardiac arrest is a devastatingly serious subject, but the last thing we wanted was to frighten people into action with heavy-handed shock tactics. Humour allows us to keep audiences open, catch them off guard, and deliver a potentially life-saving message in a way that sticks.”
Says Emma Klinakis, marketing sand community manager at St John Ambulance Victoria: “In a sudden cardiac arrest, every minute counts, but paramedics can’t always arrive in time. Many lives are saved by everyday people willing to step in and use a defibrillator, often for the very first time, but the majority of Victorians do not have access to defibrillators either at home, work or in public places. This light-hearted campaign aims to drive home the message that by having a lifesaving defibrillator nearby, more lives can be saved.”
The campaign will roll out across social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, supported by BVOD and OOH placements in gyms, offices, petrol stations and bus shelters.
Client: St John Ambulance Australia (Victoria)
Chief Executive Officer: Gordon Botwright
Marketing and Community Manager: Emma Klinakis
Performance Marketing Manager: Lorraine Meehan
Marketing Coordinator: Eve Buttigieg
Creative & Media Agency: Town Square
Executive Creative Director: Brendan Day
Chief Strategy Officer: Jeff Malone
Art Director: Peter Crawford
Copywriter: Samuel Nicolaci
Account Director: Jacqui Smith
Account Manager: Valeria Mejia Perez
Head of Production: Anna Morris
Junior Producer: Cameron Baker
Head of Media: Adrian Tan
Production Company: Haven’t You Done Well Productions
Director: Jemma Cotter
Exec Producer: Tom Rickard
Producer: Jenna Suffern
DOP: Flick Smith
Photographer: Robert Geary