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The next time you face a big communications challenge, see if you can use the benefits of humor…
The Abbotsford Police Department is conducting a campaign for better road safety. Their secret weapon? Being funny.
For example, there’s the ticketed driver who told an officer, “My dad could buy you!”
The cop replied, “Get him to buy two of me, I could use the help.”
Or there’s the response of a driver caught doing 123 km/h in a 50 km zone:
“There’s no way my car could go that fast, it would explode!”
I love that the police are publicizing these funny remarks using a lighthearted Twitter campaign. So smart! Twitter offers a relatively young demographic (63% of users are younger than 35) and, besides, people get the message better when they’re laughing.
This makes so much more sense than another police campaign I spotted yesterday, this one by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD). They’re putting stickers inside of city buses saying: “Assaults on bus operators will not be tolerated.”
Huh? Last time I checked, assaults were by definition illegal. So why would police put up with such assaults under any circumstance. (It shouldn’t be news that they won’t tolerate them!) Furthermore, most people who assault bus drivers are drunk, high or suffering from a mental illness. A small sticker like this one is not going to make a whit of difference.
Perhaps it’s time for the VPD to take a crash course (pun intended) in publicity from the APD.
