RATP - Havas Events

RATP AIRATP

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Inattention on Paris’s public transport causes an average of one accident per day. Most are easily avoidable. But when people ride the metro all the time they don’t always think about safety precautions.

The French city’s transport authority RATP wanted to wake commuters up to potential dangers, change their behaviour, and encourage the largest possible number to adopt basic safety rules.

To make riders pay attention, the idea was to take the most recognisable safety gestures in the world and use them in an unexpected context. Humour was key. Actors dressed as flight attendants, complete with little caps and pins, rode the metro and the RER one day, surprising passengers with subway safety presentations, using the same hand signals in an exaggerated way and handing out

brochures like those on the plane.

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#AIRATP

To make sure the event went viral, an influential blogger followed the “AIRATP crew”, using the hashtag #AIRATP. And because repetition is vital to get a point across, posters in the stations underlined the messages (such as don’t block the closing doors of a metro car), while one video relayed the stunt live and another one gave the full safety instructions on social networks, for a physical and digital campaign that reached a maximum number of people.

More than just a campaign, #AIRATP was the biggest security demonstration that Parisian commuters had ever seen, positioning the RATP as a concerned player and raising the public’s awareness that safe commuting requires a bit of common sense.