Lights, camera .... positive PR

It seems like every time you log onto Facebook, or even turn on the evening news, there’s another video of a police officer doing something negative and being criticized for it. With the advent of video on personal phones, the potential for negative video is incredible. As a result, law enforcement has to take control of the message, combating these negative videos with positive ones of their own.
Police departments shouldn’t just ignore the potential positives of doing their own video, or feel that it’s like shouting into the wind. One cop recently posted on Facebook that he had a dashboard video where he helped a driver in trouble, but he didn’t bother posting it because he thought no one would watch it. 

Success stories

One of the most successful, positive PR videos of recent times has to be the Dover PD’s “DashCam Confessional,” video of a police officer lip synching to Tyler Swift’s “Shake It Off.” A lighthearted video designed to show that police officers are just like everybody else, the video has more than 40 million views on YouTube and other social media platforms.
“We never had a social media strategy or even a PIO until 2013,” says Corporal Mark Hoffman, PIO, Dover Police Department. “I had been following how the Boston PD and FBI had used social media to investigate the Boston marathon bombing and I saw its effectiveness. We have solved so many crimes through social media—two bank robberies, credit card theft, homicide leads and much more. We acquired some GoPros from local businesses and we wanted to use them to shoot videos. We had already gotten 10,000 followers on our Facebook, so I wanted to do something special to celebrate.
“There is a lot of negativity about law enforcement and what could be better than a big bald police officer singing ‘Shake It Off?’” says Hoffman. “Taylor Swift is one of the hottest stars, so we knew we were going to get a wide audience and a lot of young people. My goal was to get 15,000 to 30,000 followers on Facebook…we’re up to 40,000. I wanted to get to the core group of our audience. I wanted to reach out to our community.” Taylor Swift even commented on the video, posting “LOLOLOLOL THE SASS.”
No one really knows what makes one video go viral and another just sit there unwatched, but the Dover Police had no idea the video was going to become the sensation it has. “We put it out in January of 2015, and we are still getting messages from everywhere around the world,” Hoffman says. “Just last week I got 20 messages from Australia.
He says the video served its purpose. “In our community, the people were very happy with it. It brought us a new audience as well. The officer is like a minor celebrity, invited to dinners and to give speeches now.”
The Sulphur (La.) Police recently did a promotional video that was only intended to be shown at a “Friends of the Sulphur Police” fundraising banquet, to show supporters of the police department everything they were doing. “[It’s] an encouraging video to let people see what we do on a daily basis, and it’s a motivator to our employees,” explains Sulpher’s Chief Louis Coats. “I wanted to let them know they are heroes.”
At the banquet, one of the PIOs asked if he could share it on social media, and it took off. “The response has been crazy,” Coats says. “We are in southwest Louisiana and our population is only 20,000, but we got 32,000 views in just over a month.”
The video has some interviews with Sulphur police officers inter-cut with shots of the police in action. One of the interviews was particularly telling: “What am I most afraid of? Not going home to my family. That’s really the worst thing that you can think of when you go to work,” a policeman who identifies himself as Officer Briscoe says.
“I always say that we are ordinary people doing an extraordinary job,” Chief Coats says. “We have families, we have bills, we have personal problems, and we come to work to protect and serve. When you carry a gun to work it’s not like going to the plant; it’s a different job. People don’t understand the stress we face, all the negative we see. But at the end of the day we have to deal with other people’s problems and have a smile on our faces. I wanted the video to reflect that it’s a thought process, you don’t know what’s going to happen on any given day,” he says. “You might go from a traffic incident to a homicide. Our training kicks in and we walk through the fear, and that’s where the courage comes.”
Frank Welch, an instructor at Husson University’s New England School of Communications, worked together with the Bangor, Maine Police Department to create a similar video, one that could be used for recruiting and on social media to spread the good news about the police in the community. “In this day and age with YouTube and Facebook, if you can show the public the positive side of what you are doing, visually, you are going to connect faster. A quick, concise message can really make a difference. To build a series of 30- to 45-second clips that shows the positive impact in the community can be a recruitment tool and positive PR. We did a video about the different branches, educating people about what they do. Doing it visually, with music and graphics, helps them get the message out.”
Welch used the students in his classes to produce the video, giving them valuable experience and making sure the production cost the department very little. It was important to make sure everyone knew what the objective was.
“Anytime you have a camera rolling there is a chance you might capture something you don’t want,” he says. “You have to set boundaries early—for example, the students weren’t allowed to take any footage for their own use. We had a direct contact within the department who was with us all the time. We had to make sure people were wearing the proper gear at all times and doing things in exactly the right way.”

Feedback

Everything is positive until it goes negative. One example is the video that the University of Wisconsin-Madison PD made to the popular Pharrell Williams song, “Happy.” Even though shooting the video only took about 45 minutes, and the video was edited by the PR spokesperson (which is part of his job), the department was slammed for shooting while employees were on the clock. What was supposed to be a lighthearted video showing the human side of the department backfired. The lesson? There is no telling what will work and what won’t.
“Any positive, lighthearted video can be good, but you could be criticized for not being serious enough,” says Husson University’s Welch. Making it fun can be really good and catch the attention. There is really no such thing as bad publicity. If you have other videos to support it that are about core messages, that’s even better.”
Despite the potential negatives, Dover PD’s Hoffman advises departments not to be afraid to be yourself. “Show personality on your page, show a sense of humor, show personalities,” he says. “If all you post is about people you arrested, you won’t get much feedback. If you engage with people, putting out funny things, showing personality, you will connect. It took us over a year to get our audience on board with the fact that we have some personality, then we did the DashCam confessional videos. If we had come out with that at the start, no one would have understood it. Be yourself and step outside the box. Look at it like you are promoting a business.
“Any department that is not on social media is absolutely foolish,” Hoffman says.
“You can gain so much information and you can provide so much information. We went from 93 officers to 30,000 people seeing what we do.”

What it takes

Twenty years ago, producing something yourself cost a lot of money. High quality cameras had to be rented and production costs were sky high, something limited to only professionals.
Today, however, costs have come down so much that some really high quality videos can be shot on an iPhone. In fact, a recent episode of “Modern Family” was shot exclusively using handheld devices.
“Twenty years ago video cost so much to produce, but now it’s very reasonable to make a video,” Husson University’s Welch points out. “To partner with a college like us, we did it as part of the class, so the department only had to pay for food and a hard drive. Departments should look at the local colleges, as it helps the students get demo reel material, and it lowers the cost of production.”
So, since equipment is no longer a barrier to doing quality work yourself, it all comes down to the quality of the idea. There is so much out there, standing out is difficult.
“First and foremost a video should convey its message in a way viewers find interesting and enjoyable to watch,” says George Winchell, producer, Winchell Media Productions. “In some cases where the subject matter needs to resonate more strongly with the audience, finding an unusual or extreme way of showing the information can be very effective. Should a department want to try to create funny or viral content my suggestion would be to look at real life circumstances and expand on those ideas. This is basically what reality television is. For the most part it’s not at all ‘real.’ They take a situation and then manipulate it for maximum impact, even if the events didn’t happen as shown. The ability to tell a story is very different from simple documentation of an event. This is also an area where a little research into the basics of storytelling would be appropriate.”
Be prepared for some negative feedback, no matter the content of your video. “You are going to have the naysayers out there that will call it propaganda, but that comes with the territory,” says Chief Coats from Sulphur, La. “The ‘keyboard cowboys’ often start slinging mud. The potential positives far outweigh the negatives, however. If you had a negative situation that the media reported, you can release a positive story.”

The future

Social media is here to stay and every day the different outlets—YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.—will be filled with messages. If your department isn’t the one doing the communicating, someone else will and the police department will not be able to control the message.
Get out there and start recording, and post the positive results for all to see. ■

Keith W. Strandberg is an American freelance writer and award-winning screenwriter/producer of feature films living in Switzerland. He was a former contributing editor for LET more than a decade ago.