Maritime New Zealand - Buoy-Boy
Most boating fatalities in New Zealand don’t happen far out at sea. They happen within a few hundred metres of land - in that exact zone near shore where most boaties feel totallysafe. So for Water Safety Month, Maritime NZ turned the highest-risk area into a media channel.
Introducing Buoy-Boy. A powerful ambient idea, not a poster, not a banner, not a campaign line, but a physical spokes-boy floating in the danger zone. Part safety marker, part personality, all behavioural nudge. Buoy-Boy is a bold piece of visual priming placed exactly where behaviour needs to shift. Right before people head out of the bay, harbour, or marina.
Kiwis have a deeply emotional relationship with the ocean, and this connection creates dangerous complacency. This idea interrupts that mindset in the most unexpected way. Buoy-Boy is funny, likeable, and instantly shareable. And impossible to ignore when you’re tying up ropes, launching a tinny or passing a marker.
Buoy-Boy stands for three simple life-saving rules: wear a life jacket, check the marine forecast, and take two forms of communication. His design, location, and tone of voice are engineered to trigger fast, instinctive systems-one decision making, the kind that actually changes behaviour in the moment.
Over ten Buoy-Boys are now floating at harbours, beaches and boat ramps across Aotearoa. People are stopping, pointing, photographing, and sharing him. Turning a serious message into social currency. A physical reminder has become a cultural one.
While a power beacon on the water, Buoy-Boy also appears on VOD, radio, social content, and is integrated into local weather maps.
Buoy-Boy is the spokes-buoy New Zealand always needed. A low-cost, high-impact innovation in water safety marketing. More than awareness. A real-world intervention sitting exactly where lives are most at risk.
