The Campaign

The current perception is that being a cop requires physicality and toughness, while it’s true in part, modern policing is more about working with communities and understanding the people within them to make a change for the better. That’s why we targeted recruits who strongly identify with qualities like empathy and compassion. To make our point clear we wanted to show our audience exactly the type of person we were looking for. We secretly filmed a series of social experiments that highlighted real-life situations and the public reactions, showing those who stepped up and helped others in need. These films were released online using social channels. In this film a 10yr boy, who looks as if he’s been living rough, begins eating out of a rubbish bin in a busy Auckland street. Over 35 minutes of filming around 550 people had the opportunity to see him and only 10 intervened.

Creative Execution

To launch we partnered with Mai FM, a radio network with a strong youth following and large social network that targeted Maori & Pasifika. We also worked with an influential young DJ and singer, K’Lee, who created curiosity around our campaign and encouraged her listeners to share our social experiment. Within a couple of hours our first film was on the front page of stuff.co.nz and was quickly adopted by other New Zealand media sites. The Police also posted the film on their Facebook page and issued a PR release. The confrontational first film continued its trajectory across NZ before going global being picked up in the UK (The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun), Australia (Sunrise, news.com.au), USA (Channel 4 news), Spain, China, Ireland (The Ryan Tubridy Show) and Nigeria. Even Ashton Kutcher posted a link to our film.

The campaign over achieved in all criteria. Our core objective was to increase the number of female recruits and ethnic minorities: Currently NZ Police comprises of 19% female officers, we achieved 41% female applicants – a gender increase of 115%. Currently NZ Police comprises of 20% ethnic officers, we achieved 45% ethnic applicants – a minorities increase of 125%. 3.9+million views on the NZ Police recruitment page since launch 50,000 reactions, 6000 comments and 17,000 shares on the NZ Police page And an estimated global reach of over 60 million across the campaign

Research confirmed that our target audience of 18-29 year olds are a generation that cares. They are inspired by ideals, want to live in a better world, support worthy causes and actively seek employers with a purpose. What they didn’t know about themselves was that they were already on the tipping point of becoming Police - they just needed help over the line. We needed to show them that a career in the Police Force was their opportunity to create change and make their community a better place. Our creative idea therefore needed to act as the catalyst that would trigger a “moment of realization” amongst our audience giving them the impetus to act. The creative platform was built around the call to action; Do you care enough to be a cop?