Electricity Safety Week, now in its 25th year, is a powerful reminder that impactful communication isn’t just about broadcasting messages, it’s about changing behaviour.
Originally developed by Primary in response to research highlighting the need for more effective electrical safety education for children, the week-long initiative held each year in September continues to evolve, reaching thousands of primary school students with messages that quite literally save lives.
At its core, Electricity Safety Week is a masterclass in behaviour change communications. For PR professionals, it underscores a crucial truth: every brief is, at heart, a behaviour change challenge. Whether we’re encouraging safety near powerlines or sparking conversations around mental health, success hinges on understanding what truly motivates people, or in the case of Electricity Safety Week – primary school aged children – and how to shift what humans do and how they do it, through creative strategy and stakeholder collaboration.
It is critical that PR and comms strategies can harness behavioural insights to continuously interrogate the brief more deeply, even if it seems like it’s the same project each year. It is only when we unlock hidden audience drivers, and engage closer with key stakeholders who become your most avid advocates, that we are able to deliver campaigns that do more than inform – they transform.
Read more about our Electricity Safety Week program which we continue to run on behalf of electricity distributors in NSW (Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy) and QLD (Energy Queensland). It’s where research-led insights, stakeholder partnerships and creativity can intersect to build long-term engagement and purpose-led campaigns.
It’s time to stop ticking boxes and start shifting dials. Because when we treat communication as behaviour change, we create campaigns that matter and last.
Mary-Anne Boustany, Account Director, Primary Communication
