Clicking On This Video Was No Accident

Tuesday, 16 September 2008 11:06

First and foremost, we're going to warn you that this video is not one for the faint hearted, it goes further than any advert we have ever seen in depicting a realistic workplace accident involving ladders.

It's from an ad campaign the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario ran at the end of last year. In the video a young, female shop worker falls off a ladder onto a glass display cabinet.

We were pretty solidly shocked the first time we viewed this advert, and let me tell you it is part of a series of equally shocking adverts depicting accidents in a warehouse, a restaurant and on a construction site.

WSIB Chair Steve Mahoney said in a recent interview that

We need to shock people into understanding the staggering number of workplace injuries and fatalities,"

and added that

This is not going to be a feel good campaign. We won’t feel good until workplace injury and fatality numbers start to decrease.

While shock tactics do get people talking, is it really the best way of sending a message? Other shocking ad campaigns for such causes as smoking and speeding have proved effective in the past but is there a danger that we will simply become more and more desensitized?

It does stop the viewer in their tracks and forces them to think about all the similar situations they have put themselves in or that they have witnessed and perhaps that is where the real value in this type of advertising lies. You don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it, you just have to hope that it works and the message eventually gets through to everyone.

Click on the picture to play the video clip
(Please be warned that the video depicts the accident graphically and some may find it distressing)

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