After several deep dives with global power company (and Grafik client) AES, it became clear that to effectively promote safety we had to reframe the very concept of an accident.
AES had already taken the first step by changing their internal nomenclature to “incident” versus “accident.” What at first seemed a classic example of Orwellian double speak, was clearly a very canny move indeed, with no underlying desire to deceive or to shirk responsibility. Just the opposite—responsibility was at the heart of the matter. It’s easy to say “accidents happen” and chalk them up to something out of our control. But when you believably and creatively make the point that there is a root cause for absolutely everything, that there is causation for every action, then the word accident narrows in meaning—and the case can be made that every incident is indeed preventable.
Our charge for this year’s Safety Day—a worldwide celebration of safety at every AES venue—-was to make this point: nothing happens without someone making it happen.
Good things and bad things are all the result of humans taking action.
We did so with a brief, 1:14 animated video: “Always On for Safety.” It illustrates the point that every single person can make a difference. Animation allowed us to move away from the literal precautions that vary so widely based on type of power generation or distribution, yet still speak meaningfully to all the nearly 20,000 employees of AES around the world.
AES “Always On” from grafik on Vimeo.
We present the English version here. If you’d rather hear the Bulgarian, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Russian or Tagalog versions, give me a call.
