Police Recruitment Drive | Multiple Forces
Campaigns to drive BAME and diversity recruitment for UK Police Force
Following a significant government drive and investment of £15 million to be divided among police forces in England and Wales to assist with the recruitment of officers until 2023, in particular targeting under-represented ethnic groups.
We won several competitive pitches to create recruitment films and digital content specifically targeting BAME and other minority candidates. We supported Hampshire Police with local TV advertising, and photography for digital and social channels, along with several consecutive campaigns for the Northamptonshire Police force including print, digital and TV executions and TV, digital and radio campaigns with multiple creative executions for our local Northumbria Police force.
Although the different forces have common goals, each force has its own budget and faces challenges specific to their areas a result of which they often follow different processes and goals. Our challenge was to create bespoke creative work across the three forces of Hampshire, Northamptonshire and Northumbria to achieve the shared goal of hitting government targets for recruitment.
Coming up with a range of creative routes, from a variety of different viewpoints is one of our strengths and we spent some very valuable time developing the concepts that best suited each area.
As always working with public sector clients, budgets need to be spent very wisely but through collaboration with the forces and speaking to local businesses we were able to film local scenarios play out working with real serving offices as cast.
As always working with public sector clients, budgets need to be spent very wisely but through collaboration with the forces and speaking to local businesses we were able to film local scenarios play out working with real serving offices as cast
Northamptonshire Police wanted to show the diversity of their team and roles available, so we created the ‘Be the difference’ campaign, to send a message that joining the police force can enable you to make a real, positive change for your community.
‘That was then, this is now’ focused on real-life scenarios of Hampshire Police officers who had made life-changing decisions to join the police force, discovering that there are many transferable people skills and that whatever job they did before they can make a difference now. We shot these real stories based on the officers' own experiences but as they weren’t trained actors, we kept the actions simple and relatable whilst the voiceover told the story.
The project with Northumbria Police was on a larger scale, as they wanted us to deliver their brand campaign across more channels with more key messages. The creative route chosen was; ‘They didn’t know it yet’ which highlights that you might be exactly the right sort of person to join the police, with the right characteristics - but you just don’t know it yet!
We filmed and photographed 3 different scenarios which showed 3 individuals, pillars of the community, often in selfless roles who have exactly the right attributes the Police were looking for including, caring for the community, being calm under pressure, and showing compassion. The TV adverts were then converted into radio advertisements and supported by print flyers and out-of-home advertising.
“This is fantastic, I am so, so pleased with the end result. Thank you Andrew and team you guys are amazing! “
— Bav Dhanda - Hampshire
“We had some fantastic feedback on the advert and our Exec team are over the moon with the results as we are in such a positive position to meet our Home Office targets. We will of course drop you a line if a similar opportunity comes up to work together in future.”
- Jemma Woolley Northumbria Police
“I showed our Chief Constable the advert ahead of our launch next week, and he was blown away! He loved the modern feel of it and the quality…so a massive thumbs up from him.”
- Zakia Choudhary, Northants Police
