Check out the story and video below. The West Midlands Fire Service spent around $8000 (US) for two rappers to create “The Fire Song”. Now it has some people thinking they spent too much.Some are citing frivolous spending in a slow economy.
I think that $8000 is a drop in the bucket. If any fire department wants to get down to spending there are so many other things to point fingers at.
The song may not be extremely appealing to me, but it does have a good message and I think it should be used as much as possible. The song already has over 7000 views on youtube. Let’s just hope they do some ideal marketing on this one to get their moneys worth!
As for the product, production, song, and subsequent video I think they got their moneys worth!
WEST MIDLANDS, England — A city councillor has claimed a rap song highlighting the importance of fire safety was too expensive.
West Midlands Fire Service has spent pounds 5,000 — almost $8,000 — of taxpayers money on The Fire Song which it hopes will become an internet hit.
It cost a total of pounds 10,000 to produce with the other half raised through grants.
Birmingham-based Corey ‘SMan’ Campbell was joined by fellow rapper Nigel Hinds on the safety-conscious song. Film director Daniel Alexander produced the video.
Extremely well made video, it’s not my favourite kind of music, but I still like it. Also I think this approach to educating the public is worth a try, regardless of the expense. Awareness saves lives. Also a public that is aware of the risks tends to show bettter acceptance of necessary expenses in fire safety. (At least that’s what I observed in my area)
Simply handing out information flyers and posters won’t get much attention anymore. Hopefully this will get the message out better. The Youtube viewer count looks promising, and maybe some of the viewers even considered getting a smoke alarm after seeing the video.
There are way more useless (and more expensive) campaigns than fire safety education which are paid for with tax money, also this video has one advantage over traditional (also not exactly cheap) ad campaigns: Due to it’s availability on the internet, it has a chance to create not only local, but maybe even worldwide impact.
Just had my “crack team of young’ns” (aka @avatarpenguin) watch it. She said it didn’t look like it was worth the 8K to do it.
I happen to disagree.