WSIB stop-motion ads make you stop and think

The shorts by Grey Canada look fun, but the message is dead serious.
By
July 2, 2019

When I think about stop-motion animation I think about those wonderful Wes Anderson films, specifically Isle of Dogs and Fantastic Mr. Fox. The brightly coloured stories are full of whimsy and quirk, but also have pretty dark themes.

The team at Grey Canada in a set of ads for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), called “Practice Safe Work: After the Injury,” once again tapped into this dichotomy with whimsical stop-motion characters from last year’s “Practice Safe Work” series to get a serious message across to both workers (and parents of those workers) about their rights before and after a workplace injury.

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The four new ads show viewers “that workplace accidents don’t just affect the person who’s been hurt. They affect everyone around that person, too,” explained Grey in an emailed statement. “So we made short, stop-motion films [teens would] actually want to watch – making our message not just fun but also thought-provoking.”

The eye-catching (and often darkly funny) spots caught my attention on Twitter recently and led me to explore the campaign website, Practicesafework.ca – proving stop-motion visuals à la Anderson is a pretty good way to grab social-media users attention.

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Credits

Advertiser: Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB)
Agency: Grey Canada
Agency producer: Vanessa Birze, Tina Muratovic
Art director: Chloe Kim
Copywriter: Shirley Yushkov
Associate creative directors: Ryan McNeill, Siobhan Dempsey
Account director: Casey Mendoza
Account executive: Cassia Napier