Water Safety Ireland
Client
Water Safety Ireland
Industry
Public Awareness
Year
Duration
4 Months
Project overview.
Water Safety Ireland is the statutory body responsible for promoting water safety and reducing drownings across Ireland. Ahead of the summer season, the organisation needed to drive registrations for its lifeguard training programmes and get more young people seriously considering lifeguarding as something worth doing.
Through a paid social and audio campaign, the initiative pulled in over 400 registrations and helped Water Safety Ireland reach the next generation of lifeguards before the season began.
Challenge.
WSI needed to reach very different audiences with very different asks over the course of one year: recruit the next generation of lifeguards, change how the public thinks about everyday water risk, and mark a day of national remembrance with the right tone. Each campaign had to work hard on a public-sector budget and short timelines.
Lifeguard Recruitment. Lifeguarding offers recognised qualifications and real career potential, yet most 18–25 year-olds saw it as a casual summer job or had never considered it. WSI needed more qualified candidates in its pipeline before the summer season, which meant driving registrations, not just awareness.
National Water Safety Awareness Week. WSI's data shows most people who drown never intended to be in the water, and that fatal incidents often happen in everyday places close to home (WSI Annual Drowning Report 2023). The public, however, associates drowning with swimming and dramatic incidents. WSI needed to shift that perception nationally within a single week (18–24 May 2026) and drive people to its safety information.
World Drowning Prevention Day. On 25 July, WSI needed a campaign that respected the reflective nature of the day and made the cost of drowning felt, without graphic or distressing imagery. It also had to feel distinct from the Awareness Week campaign two months earlier.
Solution.
Titan's approach was consistent across all three campaigns: start with audience insight, build a clear campaign idea, produce the creative, and run it through an integrated, continuously optimised media plan.
Lifeguard Recruitment. Titan led with the audience rather than the role. Short-form video showed the experiences and opportunities that come with qualifying, positioning lifeguarding as attainable and worthwhile. One creative strand focused on responsibility and real-world experience; another compared the hours needed to qualify with the hours young people already spend on, directly tackling the "I don't have time" objection. Paid social ran alongside audio, with continuous creative testing and retargeting to convert interest into registrations.
National Water Safety Awareness Week. Titan created a new campaign platform, "Awareness is Your Lifesaver", built on the line "You don't have to be in the water to be at risk." Instead of showing drowning, the work focused on ordinary moments where danger is overlooked, each ending with a practical safety behaviour. A hero film, "Everyday Edges", built tension through near-misses without ever showing anyone enter the water, then replayed each scene with a safer choice. Three scenario films drawn from WSI's risk data followed: The River Walk (a dog walker on a canal), On The Edge (friends fishing from a pier) and One Too Many (walking home after a night out), and an Irish-subtitled hero version. Titan also built the campaign identity, including the "Waves of Protection" graphic device, and created a"Did You Know?", vox pop series that took safety tips to the streets and challenged misconceptions about water risk. The media plan paired mobile-first video on Meta with Google Search to capture active intent and DV360 display for scale, while Spotify, Acast podcasts and 202 radio spots across 11 national and regional stations reinforced the message.
World Drowning Prevention Day. Titan's insight was that drowning doesn't just take a life; it leaves an empty place that can never be filled. "Empty Spaces" shifted the focus from the moment of drowning to the people left behind, using familiar spaces and the line "Some spaces should never be empty." The film ends on hope: on a hurling pitch, a sliotar rolls into an empty space before a teenager steps in and strikes it over the bar, tying back to the global call to "Unite to Turn the Tide." The campaign ran on Facebook and Instagram.
Result.
All three campaigns met their objectives, with strong reach, engagement and cost efficiency.
Lifeguard Recruitment. In just two weeks, the campaign delivered 403 lifeguard training registrations and more than 16,500 visits to the registration platform. It reached over 338,000 people nationwide, generating almost 1.5 million video views and more than 167,000 engagements. The 18–25 target cohort performed strongest throughout, validating both the insight and the creative direction.
National Water Safety Awareness Week. In a single week, the campaign reached more than 1.7 million people with 9.5 million impressions and over 2 million video views, driving 13,693 visits to WSI's website. It did so at a fraction of typical costs, with Meta delivering a €0.72 CPC and €1.21 CPM against industry benchmarks of €1.00–€2.50 and €5–€8. Branded search for "water safety ireland" achieved a 42.42% click-through rate, a clear sign the campaign was building recognition.
World Drowning Prevention Day. "Empty Spaces" delivered more than 3.1 million impressions, reached over 1.27 million people and generated 1.44 million video views and 121,900 engagements. It drove 4,960 link clicks at a Meta CPC of €0.59, well below the €1.00–€2.50 public sector benchmark, with a CPM of €0.89. An average frequency of 2.44 built recall without fatigue on a sensitive subject.
Across the year, the partnership showed that insight-led storytelling can change perceptions, drive action and do so efficiently for a public-sector client. Learnings from each campaign, including the strength of familiar-activity scenarios, mobile-first video and Irish-language content, have fed directly into the next.
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