The "beautiful" Dumb Ways to Die campaign is officially the most-successful ever campaign at Cannes bagging two more Grand Prix on its final day, and 28 Lions overall.
The catchy commercial, a three-minute black comedy for Melbourne's Metro Trains titled ''Dumb Ways to Die'', has won a record-breaking five prizes at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
Dumb Ways to Die is a public service announcement campaign by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia to promote rail safety. The campaign went viral through sharing and social media starting in November 2012
The campaign was devised by advertising agency McCann Melbourne. It appeared in newspapers, local radio, outdoor advertising, throughout the Metro Trains network and on Tumblr.
A video was developed by Pat Baron, animated by Julian Frost and produced by Cinnamon Darvall. It was uploaded to YouTube on 14 November 2012 and made public two days later. It used black comedy and featured "a variety of cute characters killing themselves in increasingly idiotic ways" culminating in three characters being killed by trains due to unsafe behavior. It was viewed 2.5 million times within 48 hours and 4.7 million times within 72 hours.
The song "Dumb Ways to Die" from the video was written by John Mescall with music by Ollie McGill from The Cat Empire, who also produced it. It was performed by Emily Lubitz, the lead vocalist of Tinpan Orange, with McGill providing backing vocals. It was released on iTunes, attributed to the artist "Tangerine Kitty" (a reference to Tinpan Orange and The Cat Empire). Within 24 hours of its release, it was in the top 10 on the iTunes chart and on 18 November was the sixth most popular song globally, ahead of "Diamonds" by Rihanna. It was described as "Australia's biggest ever viral hit". It also reached the top 10 on iTunes charts in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Within two weeks, 65 cover versions had been uploaded to YouTube.
Congratulations to the winners for making it big at Cannes and also raising awareness on rail safety. Stayed tuned to Undercover, more on Tinpan Orange... soon....
