New Zealand Police has launched a follow up to its popular effort to make the ‘world’s most entertaining recruitment ad’, with a focus on diversity.
‘Breaking News’, created by Ogilvy and Sweetshop director Damien Shatford, depicts the police force running a press conference that is hijacked by the inquisitive public.
The video includes over 70 real police workers, from varied backgrounds and ethnicities, to help promote the country and the force's diversity. Adding to this, the video is shot in both English and te reo māori.
“The ‘Breaking News’ video features our officers answering the questions most people commonly ask us before joining up, but in a fun, creative and accessible way,” said Police Commissioner Mike Bush, “Our organisation aspires for New Zealand to be the world’s safest country and the government has invested significantly to help us to do this by growing our overall staff numbers.”
“We want to better reflect the communities we serve and this means attracting new staff from all backgrounds, but we particularly need more women, Māori, Pacific Islanders and Asians. We also need people who are keen to work in Tāmaki Makaurau. This innovative campaign sets out to ensure any questions a potential future cop has is answered and we’re confident that will mean more people sign up to join our fantastic organisation,” he said.
Bush features in the film himself, joined by well-known figures as ‘Hunt For the Wilderpeople’ cop, Oscar Kightley, Wellington Paranormal officers Minogue and O’Leary, Lucas de Jong and Stacey Morrison feature in cameos.
The film is a follow up to a campaign launched in 2017, which the New Zealand Police said pulled in 91.8 million views in its first week and helped it achieve the highest amount of recruits ever.
The campaign this time around also includes an online video platform ChatCop, which helps answer commonly asked questions by new recruits by connecting them to real police officers.
Ogilvy executive creative director Lisa Fedyszyn, said: “We discovered that potential recruits asked questions of cops they knew in order to help reach their decision about joining, so we wanted to provide as many answers as we could through the film. We thought creating the ChatCops platform would start up more conversations and provide the answers needed for those who didn't have an officer to ask.”
