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November 22nd, 2008

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Advertisers weigh in on spoof campaign

Police recruitment ads draw applicants — and criticism

By Lisa Nuch Venbrux
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 22nd, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

Police recruitment posters, found across Prague since April, mimic a James Bond action-film aesthetic that city police say has drawn more than 3,000 applicants.

For Prague city police officers, it’s live and let die. At least onscreen.

Since April, two would-be 007’s have leapt and swaggered across Prague cinema and TV screens. The officers freeze, guns drawn, on posters in metro stations and on sidewalk billboards.

The eye-catching and ubiquitous “Akce Praha (Action Prague)” recruitment campaign was designed to draw applicants to the short-staffed city police force.

“We desperately needed to address many people and to encourage their curiosity about the job,” says Prague city police spokeswoman Radka Waitová. “It was necessary to launch a big intensive campaign.”

So far, she says, it has worked. “The response was immediate [and] we’re still receiving many responses.”

Based on this fact, the campaign could be called a success. Yet some wonder whether its long-term impact — both on the force and on the public — will do more harm than good.

Lars Killi is executive creative director at ad agency McCann-Erickson in Prague. He reacts to the ads with a tangible distaste.

“The protect-and-serve attitude is … completely gone in this carnival of an ad,” Killi says. “If you see it in a European context, they are very, very unmodern.”

Killi, who is from Norway, examined police recruitment campaigns in Sweden, England and France. He says countries in Western Europe have embraced an image of the police based on their role as public servants — not as action heroes ogling female passers-by.

“They are much more after you as a human being, how you interact with other people,” he says. “What do people want? They want to feel safe.”

The 30-second TV and film spot, designed as an action-film spoof, opens with the word “professionalism” flashed across the screen. Two officers burst through doors on a rooftop, pointing their guns in various directions with no criminal in sight.

Next, the words read “body culture.” Men are shown lifting weights in a gym. One struggles to pull a spring across his chest.

During the next segment, prefaced by “cooperation,” the two male protagonists wait in a patrol car as a female colleague guides kids across a road. One officer, poking his head out the window, winks at the woman, who smiles back. He nearly loses his hat as he ducks back into the car.

The last parts highlight the “adrenaline,” “romance” and “elegance” encountered on the beat. First an officer leaps in slow motion from a rooftop, skidding to a landing on another roof. The other officer stands arms outstretched, Titanic-style, on a speedboat’s prow.

Finally, the men saunter down a busy sidewalk, glancing back at young women coyly returning their gazes. As they do motorcycle wheelies into the sunset, “Akce Praha” flashes boldly across the screen. “Become a Prague police officer,” the ad finishes.

You only live twice

Studio Najbrt, the agency behind the ads, boasts a portfolio of successful campaigns including the square-shaped red logo used for the city of Prague. The studio’s head, Aleš Najbrt, is a well-known film director.

“We think it’s necessary to show [potential recruits] the attractive part of this work in a bit of an exaggerated way, and with humor,” Najbrt says.

He says he himself has not received any negative feedback about the campaign, and dismisses criticism about the inaccuracy of the spot’s portrayal of police life.

Vlado Staněk, chief executive officer of Graphic Studio Vlado in Řevnice, agrees that an accurate portrait of life on the force is beside the point. People won’t be fooled into thinking this shows what a police officer’s life is really like, he says.

“I kind of like the idea of this James Bond style, to get people’s attention,” Staněk says. “But the way they conducted it is very problematic.”

His concern stems from the way the majority of the public views city police officers.

“To be a policeman is viewed as rather shameful,” Staněk says. “There are more jokes about policemen than about blondes.”

Staněk points out that the policemen in the ad look “dumb,” for example when one almost loses his hat while looking at a woman. Poor casting, he says, contributes to an overall feeling that the spot is “frozen in the 1980s.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to make them look like fools,” he concludes. Instead, police should be portrayed as respectable, strong public servants to revive the trustworthy reputation officers enjoyed during the first republic, Staněk says.

The men who know too little

Beyond concern over how these ads affect the public image of the police, Killi points to another problem — the question of who they bring to the force.

“I don’t think it attracts the most intelligent guys,” he says frankly.

Police in many Western Europe countries have for years tried to highlight the “human” side of police work, basing recruitment ads and other media spots on situations in which officers use brains, not brawn.

An ad for a documentary about police academies shown on BBC Sweden, for instance, focuses on a man preparing to jump off a bridge. An officer approaches very slowly, Killi says, before saying to the man, “You know, they normally jump from the other side of this bridge.”

“You diffuse a situation by using your brain, you don’t … by using a gun,” Killi says.

The Akce Praha campaign also seems to aim at young men and is unlikely to draw women (or, for that matter, minorities) to the force, Killi says.

Based on focus groups, “I know that women negatively react to macho stuff,” he says. “They go for more intelligent options.”

Currently, according to spokeswoman Waitová, 30 percent of city police officers are women and the force is not specifically aiming to recruit more. “It doesn’t matter to us if the applicant is a woman or a man,” she says.

For now, both the city police and Najbrt appear satisfied with the outcome.

“We did not make a documentary, but a campaign that would be successful,” Najbrt says. “And it is doing well.”

— Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Lisa Nuch Venbrux can be reached at lvenbrux@praguepost.com

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