Bend Fire & Rescue:
Own Your Zone Campaign
Ad campaign for the City of Bend to raise awareness about the simple actions every homeowner can do to protect their homes from wildfire.
Role
Visual Designer
Platforms
Web/Social/Billboards
Tool Stack
Adobe Illustrator / Microsoft PowerPoint
Background
Wildfire is a natural occurrence in Oregon’s forests and our communities are increasingly threatened by the risk of fire. To help raise awareness, the City’s Fire & Rescue Department created a messaging campaign to encourage community members to take small, simple steps to protect their homes and neighborhoods from wildfire. They approached me to take their concepts and put together a cohesive campaign that aligned with the City’s brand identity.
The resulting collateral included:
A billboard design with a simple, clear message [side by side with image of the billboard]
Social media graphics for Facebook, Instagram posts and stories
Web graphics
PowerPoint presentation for the department to share at a City Council meeting and elsewhere.
I also created versions of the social media graphics and PowerPoint presentation that outside agencies could use and include their logo on in place of the City of Bend’s.
Results
While official summary reports or final assessments of the campaign’s effectiveness have not been conducted, there are several indicators that it did achieve positive, albeit largely qualitative, results:
Increased Awareness and Engagement:
Anecdotally, fire officials have noted a rise in community interest regarding defensible space principles. Workshops, neighborhood meetings, and informational sessions related to “Own Your Zone” generally saw strong turnout. Residents demonstrated heightened awareness of best practices for landscaping and home hardening, suggesting that educational outreach resonated with homeowners.Greater Participation in Debris Reduction Programs:
During the period following the launch of “Own Your Zone,” Bend’s FireFree events—which provide opportunities for homeowners to drop off yard debris at no charge—reported robust participation. Although the City did not specifically attribute these higher volumes directly to the “Own Your Zone” campaign, the timing and messaging alignment suggest that the initiative helped drive interest in removing flammable vegetation.More Home Assessments and Consultations:
Bend Fire & Rescue fielded a steady number of requests from residents seeking on-site property assessments and personalized wildfire-resilience recommendations. These one-on-one consultations, stimulated in part by the campaign, gave fire professionals a chance to reinforce “Own Your Zone” principles and track the types of improvements homeowners were considering.Enhanced Neighborhood-Level Preparedness Efforts:
Some homeowner associations and neighborhood groups took the campaign’s message to heart by organizing collective vegetation management days and sharing resources on fire-resistant landscaping materials. Although not formally tallied as part of a citywide metric, these community-led actions indicated a grassroots uptake of the campaign’s core concepts.
Learnings
[What would I do for next year?]
Instagram Reels
Include more concrete examples of what a homeowner can do on their property within each zone, including photos and videos.
Research & Roadblocks
Messaging
The initial draft messaging I received included the right tone and good content, but it needed some work. It was overly verbose and included language that the majority of the community didn’t resonate with, like “defensible”.
Graphics
The Fire & Rescue Department had created draft presentation graphics that needed work.
Competitive Analysis
We drew inspiration from Denver Water’s conservation messaging, as well as the Ad Council’s Smokey Bear campaign. What we found that resonated the best were clear, simple messages that could be quickly understood.
Implementation
Working off of the concept that the Fire & Rescue Department shared with me, I was able to simplify messaging and clean up the graphics to look a little less cartoony and more closely match the City’s branding and identity.