Sumter PD: Recruitment Ads
CLIENT: Crawford Strategy/
Sumter Police Department
TYPE: TV and social media ads
SERVICES: Pre-production, shooting, aerial video, editing.
AWARDS: SIA, AVA Digital, SCPRSA, Hermes Creative, & Communicator Awards.
We were approached by marketing company Crawford Strategy to partner with them in creating a series of ads for the Sumter Police Department that would run on TV and social media. Sumter is a warm, quaint town (in all the best ways) and as the town continues to grow, their community has invested heavily in the police department. With an expanding law enforcement, the SPD was seeking to attract quality candidate from around the country to become part of their team.
Crawford Strategy devised the campaign “Become One of Us” and created a set of ads that worked across a number of levels: 1) to attract people to the town of Sumter, 2) to show the spirit and values of their police department, 3) to highlight what it takes to be part of the police and community.
We worked with Crawford’s team to develop the visual story components for each commercial. Our team then travelled to the charming town of Sumter, SC to shoot a mix of both scripted, staged scenes as well as docu-style footage, following officers on their daily routines over the course of a few days.
To ensure that the campaign could be shown across any number of platforms, we created not only 30-second versions of each video (for use on TV of social media ads) but also 15 and 7 second versions to conform to pre-roll ad guidelines for sites like YouTube and Hulu.
RESULTS
The campaign Crawford Strategy managed with these videos was immensely successful in both client results and critical acclaim. The Sumter Police Department saw an exponential rise in applications and the campaign itself won 5 marketing awards including: Gold AVA Digital Award, Gold Service Industry Advertising Award, Silver Wing Award of Excellence, Hermes Creative Honorable Mention, and Communicator Distinction Award.