The Campaign

The idea centred on exposing people to the tough reality of being a police officer in a way that they couldn’t disconnect from. How? By making them a part of this reality. We recruited people under the guise that they were being given the opportunity to go on a standard police ride along. What they didn’t realise was that we were setting them up for an experience that they would never forget.

Execution

We recreated a crack house (a typical police encounter) using a run-down house, actors, props, and smells. We then invited four volunteers, who had no idea that the first call out they would attend would be a set up, on a police ride along. We captured the volunteers frightened reactions on 18 hidden cameras. At the end of the experience the participants were debriefed and seen by a psychologist. By the end, they were all in agreement that being a police officer is not the sort of job they would be willing to do without access to workers’ compensation. We compiled the footage from the experience into a video that brought to life the idea that being a police officer is “tough enough” without having to fight for workers’ compensation. This video was seeded online, and spread rapidly. The Crack House Experience launched in November 2016, as part of the first three months of

Tier 1 – outcomes/awareness Within one week our campaign message reached over 1 million people. In total, it reached over 3.2 million via Western Australia centric channels alone – including both local TV and press coverage. Tier 2 – knowledge/consideration Our campaign was picked up by interstate and international media, such as the Herald Sun and news.com.au. Even the Daily Mail in the UK ran the story. The media ROI for the campaign (earned media dollars vs paid media dollars) exceeded 50:1. Tier 3 – outputs/business results Thousands of Western Australians took to social media to talk about the issue; we managed to cut through the clutter of cause related marketing. The ultimate proof of success, however, is the fact that the leader of the WA opposition party declared his support for the issue, even using our campaign hashtag - #ItsToughEnough. By gaining public support we are now able to lobby the government.

The Situation

The WA Police Union wanted to achieve mass awareness about the fact that Western Australian (WA) officers aren’t covered by workers’ compensation, with a very small budget. The Crack House Experience is a PR idea that drove mass reach and engagement with the target audience with virtually zero media investment. It saw an issue that had not previously been on the agenda for WA politics gain the support of one of the state’s most influential political leaders.

The Strategy

In order to achieve our objectives, we needed to expose WA’s voting public to the dangers police officers face every day. We had to compete with the overexposure of cause-related messages. Our strategy was to make the dangers facing police officers feel more real, at a personal level, so that people feel a sense of injustice about the situation. While TV shows may portray dangerous police encounters, they still allow people to feel disconnected from what is going on. To communicate this sense of reality and elicit and emotional response we knew that video was the best platform. And given our objective was to garner public support, as well as due to our low budget, online video was the most appropriate platform.