Lois Park

Said the following about South Wales Metro:

“As part of the South Wales Metro, Transport for Wales has been installing overhead wires across 170km of track. There is already prevalent trespass on the Valleys railway and with the new electrified lines, it now carries an even greater risk. We needed to develop a behaviour change campaign that aimed to eliminate trespass but also raise general awareness.

The engagement team at Transport for Wales spent 6 months gathering insight to understand the target audience; which turned out to be boys and men between the ages of 13 and 24. We worked with a creative agency and after creating several concepts and testing the stimulus ‘No Second Chances’ was born.

The campaign is based on a fictional clothing brand and is a play on the second-hand clothing market. ‘No Second Chances’ uses items of clothing as a vehicle to communicate the fatal consequences of touching or coming close to 25,000 volts. The clothing items show the effects of not respecting the railway boundary could have on a person and their clothing. It carries the slogan ‘this is “No Second Chances”, and thankfully, it’s clothing that’s not for sale’.

It has powerful imagery, thought-provoking (yet fictional stories) and hard-hitting messaging and it’s delivering results.

Between May and September 2023, we;

- Created and launched the bilingual advertising campaign in town centres, across billboards, and on twitter, youtube, facebook and snapchat – heavily geotargeted to the audience we need it to reach. It has been seen more than 4.6 million times across the region (official media monitoring stats).

- Issued campaign flyers to all homes within 200m of the railway, emergency services, local authorities, education establishments

- Installed posters at stations

- Secured two influencers on social media with over 10,000 young male followers between them

- Had media coverage/interviews on BBC, ITV and radio on ‘energisation’ – jointly with British transport police

- Held an awareness session with the Welsh Youth Parliament to ‘test’ our schools engagement programme

- Appointed a local drama company to deliver an engaging workshop which has so far visited 19 schools and involved 4638 pupils.

- Held a ‘pop up shop’ exhibition in the centre of Cardiff, for 1 week in Rail Safety week – with 200 across the valleys visiting, as well as stakeholders and local ambassadors.

- Created our own social content from this experience, including with the Deputy Minister for Climate Change Lee Waters MS and with a first-hand experience of the dangers of railway trespass Paralympian Nathan Stephens (who lost his legs as a young boy when hitching a ride on a freight train).

- Held market stall events across Cardiff and the valleys to help raise general awareness

- Launched our website www.tfw.wales/no-second-chances

Results speak for themselves, with general awareness across the region up 9% and trespass already down 53% year on year. The campaign is going from strength to strength and is still only a third of the way through its lifespan (campaign activity planned up to September 2024).“