The Challenge: Reaching Every South Australian with Safety Messages
SA Power Networks is responsible for the electricity distribution network across South Australia — infrastructure that touches every home, business, and community in the state. With that responsibility comes an enormous communication challenge: how do you make millions of people pay attention to electrical safety?
Traditional approaches — brochures, static posters, text-heavy web pages — weren’t cutting through. People skim safety information. They assume it doesn’t apply to them. And when the message doesn’t land, the consequences can be life-threatening.
That’s where Motion By Design came in.
Our Approach: Animation That Commands Attention
We worked closely with SA Power Networks’ communications team to develop a suite of animated safety videos designed to do what text alone cannot — make people stop, watch, and remember.
Our approach centred on three principles that guide all our safety communication work:
1. Visual storytelling over information dumping
Rather than listing safety rules, we created scenarios that audiences could see themselves in. A family setting up a backyard pool near power lines. A tradie working on a roof. A farmer moving equipment under overhead cables. Each scenario played out visually, making the danger tangible and the safe behaviour obvious.
2. Accessible design for every audience
SA Power Networks serves a diverse population. Our animations needed to work for people of all ages, literacy levels, and cultural backgrounds. We used clear visual language, minimal text on screen, professional voiceover, and captioning to ensure maximum accessibility.
3. Modular content for multiple channels
We didn’t produce one long video. We created a library of modular content — short-form pieces for social media, longer explainers for the website, and training-specific versions for internal use. One production investment, dozens of content pieces.
The Results
The campaign transformed how SA Power Networks communicates with the South Australian public. As their team told us: “Motion By Design transformed how we communicate with the South Australian public.”
The animated content achieved significantly higher engagement rates than previous text-based safety campaigns. View completion rates on social media exceeded industry benchmarks, and the modular format meant SAPN could continue deploying fresh content across seasons and channels without commissioning entirely new productions.
What This Means for Your Organisation
If you’re responsible for communicating safety information, compliance requirements, or any message where understanding isn’t optional, animation and video aren’t luxuries — they’re necessities.
The data is clear: people retain 95% of a message when they watch it in video, compared to 10% when reading text. For safety-critical communications, that difference can save lives.
Want Similar Results?
We work with organisations across Australia to create safety communication content that actually gets watched. View the full SA Power Networks case study or book a free consultation to discuss your project.
