Transport and Public Safety
Paid and Organic Social Media
The British Transport Police (BTP) is a specialist police force responsible for policing the railway network in Great Britain, including England, Wales, and Scotland. They ensure the safety and security of passengers and staff, tackle crime, and provide a visible presence on the railways. The BTP also works to prevent and respond to incidents on the railway infrastructure, including stations and trains. Their jurisdiction covers all train operating companies, Network Rail, and other rail infrastructure providers.
For the British Transport Police, we delivered a tailored social media strategy that included both organic and paid social media services. Due to an ongoing increase in robberies on the rail network, The British Transport Police required our expertise to execute a robbery awareness campaign across their social channels. With the crimes affecting and being perpetrated predominantly by individuals under 18, BTP needed to reach this demographic to deter potential offenders through education about the long-term consequences. Additionally, they aimed to reassure victims that BTP is actively working to reduce crime and provide advice on how to make a report, by promoting their 61016 text number.
In order to reduce these robbery offences on the rail network and increase public confidence that the British Transport Police are taking action to prevent and detect crime, our first point of action was to identify this audience and what social networks they were most active on. From our research we identified a huge community within Snapchat and TikTok for the target demographic. We worked tactically with these social media platforms, with the under 18 audience being notoriously hard to reach on social media through advertising, due to restrictions on the platforms and EU regulations. The social media assets were carefully curated with this audience in mind, using police siren sounds and blue flashing lights to draw attention and stop the scroll, as well as using simplified text across the video that could be easily digested by the targeted audience.
As a result of the campaign, we achieved over 12 million impressions, 603.5K post engagements, whilst growing 603,500 the audience on their account by 22,000 followers. BTP saw a reduction in robbery offences on the rail network and a 15% point uplift in contact to the 61016 text number, directly attributed to the social media campaign.
Impressions
Audience Growth
Post Engagements
“Ellis Digital transformed our social media platforms at British Transport Police. They digested our briefs and came up with creative ideas above and beyond our expectations. One TikTok video resulted in a considerable increase in reports from young people into our 61016 text number, another went viral and one even made the national news. Caitlin and Sebastian are a pleasure to work with and understood our brand and what we wanted to achieve from day one.”
Charlotte Styles, Head of Media at the British Transport Police
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