An innovative recruitment, marketing, and PR initiative was needed to replenish the New Zealand Police recruitment candidate pool and enable Police recruitment targets to be achieved during 2011-2012.Past traditional brand campaigns with significantly larger budgets had been effective in attracting ‘the masses’ to consider a career with the New Zealand Polic; however, many of those individuals are not who New Zealand Police is specifically looking to now attract. An emotive, post-Christchurch-earthquake-appropriate, PR and direct response-based campaign, which motivated ‘quality’ kiwis to seriously consider becoming a cop, driving them online to newcops.co.nz to take the required first recruitment step (view a seminar) was needed.

As long as there have been cops, people have hassled them through graffiti. As opposed to using predictable photography of officers undertaking real 'extraordinary' deeds, we spray-painted street art. Installations appeared where events occurred and reflected stories from the Christchurch earthquake, Wellington and Auckland. These stories showed a mixture of physical bravery, compassion and intellect from a range of officers from different demographics.

Each installation was created by a well-known artist and every fortnight a new execution was produced, promoted, and photographed for use in other advertising. Each had the headline: ‘You too can do something extraordinary’, and the CTA: ‘Become a cop, newcops.co.nz’. TVNZ created TVC content.

Online banners linked to newcops.co.nz where each story was told in video. QR codes placed on Adshels, served as street maps to sites and linked to videos. Minor adjustments were made during installations and stakeholder consultations, otherwise all ran as intended.

Initially reported widely by local media, the installations went viral, discussed on major sites including Spiegel (Germany), Metro (UK) and The Atlantic Wire, plus on hundreds of pop and urban culture blogs including Perez Hilton (Hollywood), The Daily What and Animal (New York). Headlines included: ‘Awesome job immortalised in alleyway art’; ‘Police street art, do something extraordinary’. Earned media was plentiful, positive and effectively doubled our total media spend.Ultimately we wanted more people to take the first recruitment step - watch a seminar on newcops.co.nz. We delivered significant numbers of visits to newcops.co.nz (277% more than the same period last year), which were converting to seminars, at a higher ratio than past campaigns. We brought a continuously declining average, to an increasing above average result and made significant inroads in the desire for ‘quality’ accomplishing higher proportions of seminar completion by non-New-Zealand Europeans, and those aged 18-25.