Revolutionising recruitment for whole time firefighters. A campaign that transformed applicant diversity.
Results
Organic social, paid for social, targeted TV ads
1373 applications: 114% of target
Female applicants doubled to over 7%
Non - white applicants increased by 1100% to over 20%
Reach 1.2m
Winner : The Recruitment Marketing Awards 2023
The Need
Freeze! Think of any fire fighter recruitment ad you've ever seen.....
They all showed fires being tackled or people being cut out of cars.. Are we right?
(You can un-freeze now) Those messages don't give a full picture of what the modern role looks like. The modern role is far more varied than that, and the majority of time is not spent fighting fires or cutting people out of cars.
All of this means that traditional recruitment has not reached many great candidates who hold skills that the service needs.
Surrey Fire and Rescue Service needed to recruit whole time firefighters with a range of skills suitable for the modern role, and saw this as a valuable opportunity to increase the diversity of applications in order to better represent the communities they serve.
Something different was needed, something the likes of which no one had ever seen before, something that (well you get the idea)..
Discover
To start, we went to great lengths to identify and understand the audiences that Surrey wanted to reach. We built up a picture of the many considerations for how the role needed to be portrayed to both existing personnel and potential new applicants. Some fire services have had significant challenges with their culture over the years, and we all recognised that portraying the role and culture of the service was hugely important to get right, and something that would be scrutinised online. We identified what tone of voice, content and messages would satisfy the services requirements, and land with their audiences, and we developed those learnings into structured creative approaches, which we tested amongst an agile focus group.
We defined the strategy, we identified a cracking creative, messages were agreed, the media platforms were planned for and pencils were sharpened... What happened next?
(Cue the 'Develop' phase!)
Develop
We planned for a host of static and moving image assets to be developed from a core 'hero asset' which was a 60 second video.
Outputs included a targeted TV ad shown locally to suitable homes, a range of shorts for social media platforms produced at different durations and formats, 'Behind the Scenes' content and stills photography and design for print, online materials, microsite content, vinyl vehicle wraps and event banners.
The video was filmed at Guildford fire station using real fire crews for authenticity and cost efficiency.
An actor played the role of the lead firefighter, the granny and 'buff topless guy with kitten' (you'll know him when you see him).
Deploy
Content was disseminated using a paid and organic strategy across Surrey FRS's social channels, and on the SKY TV network, just in the Surrey area for 4 weeks.
Your Fire & Rescue Service can have a slice of the success pie!
That's right. You can use this advert too! Our fire and rescue recruitment campaign pack gives you all the content you need to advertise posts at your fire and rescue service, whether that's for On call or Wholetime, tailored to your service!!
We modify the call to action that unfurls on the banners at the end for your service!
Accents on the voices and visual details such as service names and logos in the content can all be modified to represent your local service.
Our ad is ready made, along with a suite of wider campaign visuals, meaning you'll very quickly be up and running with all the materials you need for a multi-platform campaign, including social channels, web, print, radio and TV, and all at an incredible price point!
Find out more about using this fire & rescue advert.
We love our version of the advert and are proudly using to recruit personnel in the Surrey area. We are using the ad on our social channels, both organic and paid for, and local targeted TV advertising campaign, all taken care of by LIQUONA. This couldn’t be any easier, giving us time to get on with other key priorities! You’ve all been so amazing to work with, thank you again!
Sophie Read, Senior comms manager, Surrey Fire & Rescue
Behind the scenes
