EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Background, Objectives and Methodology
1. The latest phase of the Scottish Executive's Fire Safety Campaign, 'No Chance' ran from 5 December 2005 to 26 February 2006. The campaign was targeted at the general public and it sought to reduce the problem of accidental house fires in Scotland through promoting greater public awareness of the risk of domestic fire. In order to reduce complacency, there is a need to make the target audience (all adults in Scotland) feel more at risk from fire.
2. The principal aim of the research was to evaluate the awareness and effectiveness of the latest phase of the campaign among the general public in Scotland. Specific research objectives were:
- To measure campaign awareness among the target audience
- To measure the campaign's effectiveness in communicating desired messages
- To examine public attitudes towards fire safety and risk in their homes
3. The target audience for the campaign and for the research was Scotland's adult population. In this instance, mruk's in-home omnibus was considered the most cost effective approach to address the research objectives.
4. Fieldwork was undertaken between the 10 th and 16 th February 2005. All interviews were carried out by mruk's own IQCS (Interviewer Quality Control Scheme) accredited fieldforce. In total 1040 interviews were achieved.
Context
5. The issue of fire safety and fire prevention is deeply rooted in behaviours and attitudes.
6. Three factors should therefore be borne in mind when reviewing these results:
- Dramatic movement in attitudes and behaviour is unlikely over a short period of time (behaviours and attitudes tend to change slowly over time on issues such as this).
- Communication campaigns such as this cannot be expected to achieve massive, immediate impact in isolation of other contributing and complimentary activity.
- This campaign is only part of all the information people may have been exposed to on this subject and, therefore, may only be in part responsible for any changes in behaviours or attitudes.
7. In this instance, no benchmarking or continuous tracking research was undertaken directly before the campaign started although evaluations of previous campaign phases were conducted 1. The most appropriate approach was therefore to carry out an evaluation after the campaign had taken place and seek to establish differences in attitudes between two key sub-groups: those who actually recognised the Scottish Executive campaign material and those who did not. In this way, any differences in awareness, attitudes or behaviours can be related to exposure to the media campaign.
Key Findings
8. The Scottish Executive campaign was effective in being noticed and remembered by its target audience: Five out of ten (50%) respondents claimed they recalled seeing or hearing some advertising related to fire safety or prevention recently. On prompting with a visual still of the television commercial this figure increased to 58%.
9. The findings show that the specific messages of the campaign have been remembered by those who saw the campaign. This is positive and confirms that specific aspects of the campaign have been memorable, particularly: "You should not overload plug sockets" and "Overloaded plug sockets can cause fire".
10. However, the messages "fit smoke alarms" is higher amongst those who confirmed they had not seen the Scottish Executive campaign material. This suggests that the message in this year's campaign relating to plug sockets has been strong enough to displace the former logical message of smoke alarms.
11. The slogan used last year " Don't give fire a home" has higher level of recall than the slogan "Every hour of every day someone in Scotland has a fire". This is consistent with last year's findings and as was noted there may be merit in aiming to build on this awareness.
12. The level of recognition of the TV commercial was 58% which is a marked increase on the overall recognition of the press and TV activity used last year at 34%. The most recent campaign was a lower weight than last year (with no press) and mruk research would attribute this increase to a more impactful execution in the most recent wave. The previous campaign consisted of two TV adverts whereas the most recent campaign had only one. This is not to say that using two adverts would have diluted recall as many effective campaigns use multiple executions. It is worth noting that last year's campaign had lower reach as the adverts were not aired on ITV channels and so improved media scheduling in the most recent wave has also contributed to higher prompted advert recognition.
13. There was:
- Slightly higher spontaneous and prompted awareness among those with children in the home
- Females had slightly higher visually prompted advertising recall (60% compared with 55% of males)
- Slightly higher prompted advertising recall amongst the C1C2 2 group
14. There is no evidence that the campaign has had any impact on people's intended or immediate behaviours in relation to smoke alarm fitting or testing. For example, people who had seen the advert were no more likely to have tested the smoke alarm fitted in their homes, than those who had not seen the advert.
15. The advertising has appeared to make people think about particular issues:
- The majority (89%) agreed the advertising "has helped me understand that fire is a risk even in my own home"
- The majority agreed "It made me think about what I could do to reduce the risk of fire in my own home"
- Most of those with prompted recall also felt it had "made them feel concerned for their households safety"
- However there is still little notable difference in attitudes to fire safety amongst those who had visually prompted adverting awareness and those who did not. Despite increased advertising awareness, those who had seen the advertising still held similar views towards fire safety as those who had not seen the advertising, therefore the advertising had not resulted in any substantial attitude shifts.