Crime Interrupted is a recruitment campaign for the Australian Federal Police (AFP). It's relevant for Creative Strategy because, rather than simply buying ad space for a traditional recruitment campaign, we created branded content people sought out themselves. Crime Interrupted is a 6-part true crime podcast that tells the detailed story of how the AFP outsmarted serious crime, completely repositioning the AFP in the process, and showcasing what a career in the AFP looks like. Crime Interrupted became Australia's number 1 True Crime podcast and number 2 podcast (behind Joe Rogan), and the most successful AFP recruitment campaign to date.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is the federal law enforcement agency of the Australian Government tasked with investigating and preventing serious crime, ranging from terrorism to human trafficking.

The AFP was struggling to increase applications from outside its traditional base of Caucasian Men aged 20-30. This was becoming an increasing problem. As serious crime evolves and becomes more complex, the skillsets and people required to stay a step ahead of it have become more diverse.

The AFP needed a large increase in female and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) audiences in order to have a more diverse set of skills and better represent the Australian population which is one of the world's most multicultural.

The objectives were increases in visits to the jobs website and increases in female and CALD application numbers. Very quickly however our research indicated that the AFP had a brand problem.

Our research showed that that law enforcement, the world over, had an image problem. It is often seen to use force over finesse and is considered a relatively dated and male-dominated industry by the diverse candidates it requires.

The problem was that the very applicants the AFP needed (Female and CALD) were excluding themselves from the AFP recruitment communication because they did not believe the AFP was a 'career for them'. It was too violent and not cerebral enough.

Our problem was how to find, target and attract applicants who had no interest in hearing from the AFP, did not understand the important role the AFP played and were not attracted to a career in policing.

What started as a recruitment campaign brief quickly morphed into a brand strategy piece that ended up repositioning the AFP as a smart organisation that sat above everyday State policing.

Our first step was to understand the barriers. We conducted 26 internal stakeholder interviews all the way up to the Commissioner; 12 focus groups and a national quantitative survey with 1200 respondents.

The biggest barrier for our target audiences was a significant lack of understanding about what the AFP is and does. We had a major brand issue to overcome before we could talk about specific jobs. The AFP required a brand repositioning.

Our key insight was that by positioning the AFP as a smart organisation full of people who solve crimes with their heads not their muscles immediately made a career in the AFP more attractive to our key audiences. By showcasing that the 110 jobs in the AFP were linked by their problem-solving approach made the AFP a more progressive organisation. Our breakthrough moment was the strategy to position the AFP 'outsmarting serious crime with intelligent action'.

We created a new brand platform from this strategy, A Step Ahead.

At a time when 91% of people find traditional ads more interruptive than ever we knew we had to create communication that drew our audience in, rather than pushed our message out.

So we created a podcast series telling the detailed story of the intelligent actions of real AFP officers in bringing down serious criminals. Our recruitment campaign 'Crime Interrupted' is a 6-part podcast series that tells the detailed stories of how serious crimes were solved and prevented by a diverse set of AFP personnel.

An ad campaign would never have allowed the time to do the investigative process justice. We partnered with Case File (Australia's number one podcast) to create 'Crime Interrupted', which fast became Australia's number one true crime podcast and the country's second most popular podcast only behind Joe Rogan.

The AFP brand awareness is up and brand understanding considerably so. Crime Interrupted has resulted in recruitment upswings even before the campaign has ended.

Crime interrupted has already been listened to over 400,000 times and is likely to get many more listens on Spotify. It reached number 1 in the Australian True Crime podcast charts and number 2 in national charts behind Joe Rogan in total podcast streams. A significant result.

Visits to the jobs website is up 114% from the same period the year previously and in regard to applications, actual numbers female and CALD applications are significantly are up. Female applications are up 40%, and the proportion of female applications as a percentage has increased to 35%, the highest ever figure on record.

The Crime Interrupted recruitment campaign is regarded by the AFP as their most successful in memory, and testament to its success, series 2 is underway.