British Transport Police | Brand Case Study: Ellis Digital

The Brand.

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.

12,000,000
Impressions
603,500
Post Engagements
+22,000
Audience Growth
+15%
Awareness (of 61016) Uplift

The Obstacle.

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.

The Action.

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.

The Result.

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.

2.57M
Organic Post Reach
30,089
Likes and reactions
31,086
Engagements
4,450
Post clicks

The Objective

Through our continued partnership, we were tasked by the British Transport Police to successfully deliver out a social media campaign across their social channels to publicise BTP’s robust operational policing activity undertaken to tackle sexual offences and violence against women and girls (VAWG) on the rail network. The campaign was focused around the Taylor Swift Era’s Tour taking place across the UK, with the majority of victims of sexual offence being women and girls in their teens and twenties; TikTok and Instagram being the priority channels for victim-focused content.  The aim of the campaign was to raise awareness of text 61016 – and we wanted to do this by tapping into the hype around Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour, in the hopes of generating meaningful engagement on social media from women and girls (for example, comments, saves and shares).

The Action.

As part of the campaign, BTP officers handed out ‘text 61016’ friendship bracelets in all of the cities that Taylor was visiting on her UK tour (Edinburgh 7th June, Liverpool 13th June, Cardiff 18th June, London 21st June) and we used social media to get coverage of this and further extend the reach of the message that the officers were delivering to attendees of the concert. We also utilised samples of the bracelets and set up filming in advance of the June dates with our London neighbourhood teams, to help support the video content captured at the events. With content captured during this period also to be distributed for awareness of text 61016 ahead of Taylor Swift’s next set of tour dates in August.

The Result.

The campaign ended up reaching a whopping 2.7 million people organically, this was mostly driven by their most liked Instagram post ever, created by us, which is currently at 25,000 likes and counting – the most engaged piece of content that BTP have ever had on Instagram.

“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

Let’s work together and create something great.

Speak to a member of our team today to grow your online presence and to start seeing unparalleled results.