BoostOurBlue Campaign

Situation
The Lubbock Professional Police Association faced a dilemma: Lubbock police officers were underpaid, especially compared to other police departments in Texas. This lower pay caused long-term officers to leave for less-stressful and higher-paid jobs. This resulted in an increasing number of less-experienced officers facing complex situations in a city where violent crime rates are among the highest in the state. The public was likely ignorant of how dire the situation was—and could possibly get.

Objective
Make the public aware of the disparity in police pay between Lubbock and competing markets. The public also needed to be informed that there were funds available within the city budget so that police pay could be positively affected without a tax increase for Lubbock citizens.

Solution
TPG recommended a campaign theme entitled, Boost Our Blue, indicating that Lubbock’s men and women in blue need our support. The use of OUR implied that the police force—and therefore this issue—are ultimately the responsibility of the community; that the citizens needed to take ownership and action. Action was defined as a call to contact city council members and the mayor to let them know that the community was in support of Lubbock police officers.

Execution
Tactics utilized for this campaign were Billboard, Digital, Social Media, Radio, a Landing Page, Town Hall Meeting, and Public Relation efforts.

  • The billboard campaign ran consecutively from May 10 – July 10
  • Radio ads ran in two flights: May 17 – June 13 and July 19 – August 13
  • Social Media ran May 15 – September 1
    • Total reach was 147,646. Organic reach for their Facebook page was 94,035. These users were not reached through a paid ad. Because of the content we generated, it created a high engagement from our 2,364 followers and resulted in an organic reach that was almost 40x the number of followers that we had.
    • The paid reach was 55,694. During the campaign, we had 10,554 engaged people on social media.
  • Our Digital Campaign included Programmatic and Responsive Display Campaign that ran May 27 – June 21
    • Over that time, we delivered 1.3 million impressions and sent more than 1,400 people to the site to learn about the pay disparity that LPD was facing, resulting in a CTR of .11% (above the benchmark of .07).
  • BoostOurBlue.org traffic between May 15 – Sept 1
    • 3,484 unique users with 4,773 sessions. 33% came from clicking on a digital ad or as a view thru, 32% from Social Media, 30% came directly by typing in the website, and 5% were referrals from our public relations efforts (TV and Radio Coverage). Our coverage was wide-spread and saw visitors from 43 states.
  • Our Public Relations efforts included writing Media Releases about the pay disparity and high crime rates, and promoting a Town Hall Meeting and disseminating it to our local media partners. This resulted in multiple interviews and stories on local news, social media, and local radio shows.
    News Reports | Wilkes Radio

Results
The Lubbock Police Department received a 16% raise for new officers and 12% raise for existing officers—well above any anticipated result. This issue became a major topic of discussion in the community, and the public responded in support.