LOVE HEART: Why I think South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue’s new social video is one of the greatest ever made

You may have seen the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue video.

In the film, firefighters and staff from across the organisation read critical comments left for them last time they added a rainbow flag to their social media profiles to mark LGBTQ history month.

The comments are hurtful and smallminded.

But reading them with a straight face the firefighters, senior staff and office workers shoot them down.

The video is here:

Last year we got a load of abuse when we added the rainbow flag to our profile picture.

We don’t think homophobic abuse is acceptable and we stand with all those LGBT+ people we serve and employ 🏳️‍🌈

Thanks for the comments… 👍#LGBTHM2020 pic.twitter.com/kwzAvKWUjq

— South Yorkshire Fire (@SYFR) February 5, 2020

So far, 12-hours after posting the video to Twitter it has been liked 8,400 times and RT’d 2,000 times. It’s been viewed 170,000 times. On Facebook there’s been a similar reaction reaching 230,000 people.

Numbers are good because they can measure things.

I’d love to know how many negative comments there’s been because I can’t see one.

What makes this good

A chum who is a member of the LGBT+ community sent me a link to the video. He loved it because he likes feeling seen by the organisation in LGBT+ history month. Thinking about it, I can see what he’s getting at.

What makes this good for me as a keen seeker of good public sector content is that it includes real people from all parts of the organisation. It has junior and very senior. It shows that South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue employ real people.

There’s wit and humour there, too, like the toy cat up a tree.

But that’s just one level.

What really makes it fly is this.

All too often it feels as though the Bad People are winning.

Here, it felt as though the Bad People won last year. But the organisation got up, put all those barbed words into a bun, ate it and by doing so BECAME MORE POWERFUL thereby rendering the Bad People VANQUISHED.

And that’s what makes it truly brilliant.

Full disclosure: I worked as a freelance with South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service a few years ago to help their social media approach but I wasn’t involved in this project.