CHALLENGE
The Hiring Managers in the City of Philadelphia’s Police Department (PPD) came to SCG in June 2023 to strategize on three upcoming open application periods to hire new Police Officers. Over the past few years, the City found itself with a significant shortage of officers due to a drastic drop in applications combined with a spike in early retirement. The City had never had a formal creative, media or audience strategy to target potential recruits.
SOLUTION
CG worked closely with several PPD recruitment and marketing team members to devise a comprehensive media strategy while developing dynamic creative and messaging to motivate people to become police officers for the city. This included research on potential target audiences and where to reach them as well as assisting with photoshoots, videos and officer interviews.
The strategy evolved significantly from the first campaign in the Fall of 2023 to the one completed in July of 2024. Initial strategy utilized billboards, bus and train advertising along with digital, mobile and social support. We had our teams analyze each campaign on a weekly basis, adjust to optimize and change/add media outlets as the next campaign was launched. For the most recent campaign, we took our findings and focused our marketing strategy on where we saw the most results:
- Programmatic ads
- Digital – Geo-fencing/Geo-targeting
- Google ads
- OTT
- Social Media, including Tik-Tok.
- Streaming audio including Spotify, iHeart and Spanish language platforms
Because SCG has many years of relationships with local media, we were also able to secure special on-air reads during Eagles games by Merril Reese, live reads on WIP by Hugh Dougles (former Philadelphia Eagle) and special “lie detector” day with officers from the PPD in studio during on-air broadcasts.
RESULTS
Since SCG began working with the PPD our campaigns have reached over 6 million people and have shown a 33% increase in applicants for the June – July 2024 campaign. We also showed a 7% increase in female and minority applications. These increases were well above client expectations. Due to our extraordinary results, we launched our fourth campaign for PPD in September 2024.
Accolades
The new Mayor of Philadelphia, Cherelle Parker, and the new Police Commissioner, Kevin Bethel, both made special mentions of our latest campaign and how it has made an impact on the community and resulted in a successful recruitment effort.
