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Fire & Emergency New Zealand this week launched You’re Cooked; an integrated public safety campaign that gives New Zealand’s ‘under the influence chefs’ the recipe to make food, without making fire.

With one in four housefires starting in the kitchen, and 50% of all fatal house fires involving alcohol or drugs, the reality is that cooking under the influence is often a recipe for disaster in Aotearoa.

“It's easy to get distracted if you're drunk or high, and that's why cooking on the stove so often leads to disaster,” says Steph Rotarangi deputy chief executive. 

“This is not the first time we have tackled this issue through our social marketing, but our old 'Don't drink and fry' platform needed an original modern take to fit today's audience.

Developed in collaboration with Chef Jamie Johnston of Everybody Eats, the recipes come from the world of our under the influence chefs. Toast Sandwich, Jacked Fairybread, Not-Fried Rice and Kiwi Onion Carbonara are but some of the many fire-free offerings that illustrate the plethora of ways to safely satisfy the late night cravings (without burning the house down). 

��������'s Delmar Terblanche spoke to Motion Sickness ECD Sam Stuchbury to get some more insight into just how this campaign was put together.

��������> Tell us about collaborating with Jamie Johnston? What did he bring to the table? (badum-tish)

Sam> Working with Jamie to create the recipes allowed us to really find some unique dishes using the ingredients found in most fridges. Jamie is the Executive Chef at Everybody Eats, a charity that serves restaurant quality meals made from rescued, perfectly good food that would otherwise go to waste. Jamie’s innovative background felt like natural fit when it came to designing delicious food for the cooked, who most probably only had the basics at home.

��������> How is the campaign strategy different for the various different media channels?

Sam> We had a broad variety of channels for the campaign, and we wanted to make sure the creative was bespoke to each. Our audience don’t typically engage with fire safety messages. This needed to feel more like a world of entertainment and recipe content, than an ad campaign.

A heavy digital video focus leads the campaign. This is through social media and SVOD, in particular TikTok, as our main target audience skews younger. We used short form videos of the drunk public, testing the recipes in our downtown pop-up kitchen, on camera. Short form, hooky and something that doesn’t really feel anything like an ‘ad’. The unpredictability of the action draws you in, to see what will happen next. It’s that same sense of unpredictability that starts breaking down the barrier that a house fire will ‘never happen to me’.

As for outdoor, we used imagery from the cookbook in high-dwell sites to present different recipes, serving the irrisistable food on a platter. For wider digital, a custom micro-site, curated Instagram feed and digital book allow people to really delve into the cook book, which is punctuated with safety messages. Finally, the limited edition physical book is being used for an influencer campaign, online giveaways and for media partnerships. With big multi channel campaigns creative can get messy, however having the “You’re Cooked’ book underpins the whole project and keeps it on track. Everything is tied together with a nice greasy bow.

��������> Have you tried any of the recipes? Any favourites?

Sam> A favourite for me is probably the Toast Sandwich. Putting buttered toast within two slices of non-toast (bread) is the innovation the world right now needs. It’s also pretty irresistible to anyone even slightly cooked.

Why a recipe book? What sets this one apart from previous, similar fire safety campaigns?

Sam> It wasn’t necessarily about the recipe book, but the opportunities the recipe book allowed us. Other fire safety campaigns have focused more on unpacking the safety messages, in a logical, yet emotionally connective way. However, this campaign was intended to reach an audience disengaged with these kinds of fire safety or prevention messages. It’s a group who feel a house fire isn’t going to happen to them, and they’d rather not stress about it. The recipe book was the launch pad for entertaining content that builds relevance, provides a solution, and engages in a non-threatening way.

“In a perfect world, people wouldn’t get drunk or high, but that’s simply not the world we’re living in,” says Hilary Ngan Kee Head of Strategy Motion Sickness “‘You’re Cooked’ was wholly designed to function in the real world. That’s a world where people do things they’re not meant to do, they live in the here and now, and when they’re hungry, they’re going to want to eat. This is a campaign made to grab attention and engage, but to also show people that the safer option is a good option, in every sense.”  

In a rollout across digital, social, and outdoor platforms, ‘You’re Cooked’ centres around a one-of-a-kind cookbook; a buffet of crafted and considered recipes that don’t require the use of an oven or stovetop.

“From the inception of the ‘You’re Cooked’ platform, we knew a little bit of smoke and mirrors wasn’t going to cut the mustard when speaking to our under-the-influence audience - the campaign had to live and breathe in their world.” says Jordan Stent Creative Director Motion Sickness. “It’s a concoction of lived experiences and crowd-sourced confessions, inspired by all of the resourceful methods and inclinations that exist in the inebriated reality of our audience. As a result, the creative has landed in a rather unique territory. A blurry mix of fact and fiction, in which the traditional PSA campaign has been almost co-opted by the same individuals we were inspired by.”

The second stage of the campaign then took the suite of curated recipes into the field to be tested by real, cooked people on the set of a custom You’re Cooked Test Kitchen.

Unveiled in Britomart Square, during a churning Friday night, the amateur chefs donned both toque and apron before becoming the hosts of their own booze soaked cooking show. Forgoing the allure of the golden arches or tinfoil clad kebab, the chef's fire-free victory lap of the kitchen and journey from cooked to contented is captured in a series of lively videos, each showcasing the method behind one of the book’s many recipes.

You’re Cooked is live from 27th November to 7th January across social, online video, programmatic display, out of home, digital audio and influencer activity.