Dumb Ways to Die

An often-told adage in advertising is that “an effective ad should not feel like an advertisement.” No other ad does this better than the Melbourne Metro Trains public service campaign Dumb Ways to Die. 

This campaign emerged from the Australian division of the advertising agency McCann. McCann is focused on having “Truth Well Told.” Getting smart, simple, and truthful insights is the most important thing for McCann. The truth for this campaign was: “Trains travel in a straight line. If you get hit by one, you’ve probably done something pretty silly, which makes getting hit by a train one of the dumbest ways to die.”

This truth was then transformed by turning the public service announcement and filling it with off-beat, dark humor. Featuring cute animated characters dying in horrific ways, the carnage is set to a catchy tune. This campaign went viral, if you were on the internet back in 2012, you’ve probably heard it before. The video has reached over 300 million views on YouTube and has been shared over 5 million times. According to McCann, this makes it the most shared ad of all time. The campaign generated at least $50 million in global-earned media value. By any metric you want to use, this campaign was a smash hit. 

This campaign was so popular, it ended up creating a media franchise. The song used in the ad was uploaded to iTunes. A mobile game was created in 2013 and has received 6 sequels/spin-offs. The Dumb Ways to Die YouTube channel is still active, posting trailers for upcoming projects, and various shorts. Metro allowed Empire Life Insurance to use characters from the franchise for their own ad campaign in 2014. In 2021, PlaySide Studios, an Australian video game developer purchased the Dumb Ways to Die franchise from Metro for $2.25 million. 

Rarely is an advertising campaign so successful that it’s able to create a successful media franchise. McCann and their focus on finding truth and transforming it into something interesting helped them develop this wildly successful campaign. As they say on their website “we never imagined it would be such a huge global hit. But it was more than just dumb luck.”