To promote workplace safety among young workers, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (WSIB) has created www.prevent-it.ca, a website featuring 11 animated videos that show a young worker, Scott, whose life changes dramatically after he loses his hand on a meat slicer at work and bleeds everywhere, on the face of the girl he dates and into his popcorn at a movie theater.
“They are very strange, uncomfortable visceral images that are all disturbing,” said J.J. Sedelmaier, president and director at J.J. Sedelmaier Productions/White Plains, NY, the animation studio. “They grab you because of that.”
“Scott” shows the main character with a bloody stump, walking down the street to meet his friend, before someone on a bike delivers a fake appendage.
The animations were created in comic-book style, “so that they looked like they were created by human beings, not computers,” Sedelmaier said. “They were drawn on paper, then we scanned them and colored them digitally, and delivered them as sequential TIFF files at 72 dpi.”
The campaign also included print ads, including transit posters, that were done first. “We used the same theme in the videos as we did in print,” he said. “We got to know the drawing style and the characters through the print.”
Joe Piccolo, group creative director at DRAFTFCB/Toronto, said the videos, which launched May 18, will only play at www.prevent-it.ca. He said workplace safety is “a subject kids don’t think about and if they’ve seen an ad, it’s forgotten. But the average time on the site is six minutes, which is a lot of time to spend, so we think it’s working.”
The videos combine with information on the site, such as how to file workplace complaints, that will teach young workers about safety on the job and help the WSIB achieve its goal of preventing accidents and providing assistance to workers who are injured on the job.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More