Brief

Cyber crime has become a bigger problem for worldwide authorities than drug trafficking. In Wales e-Crime costs Welsh businesses around £294 million every year.

To counter this the Welsh Assembly Government-supported e-Crime Wales partnership is committed to equipping businesses with the tools to protect themselves from online crime in all its forms.

The culmination of its work is an annual Summit, with the fifth taking place in October 2009. Working Word was retained in April 2009. The brief was to increase awareness of the e-Crime Wales project and to generate media profile for the summit, attracting at least 350 delegates.

Actions

Giving the campaign a memorable kick-start, an online ‘prank' was targeted at key audiences and media using April Fools' Day as a hook.

A link to a ‘Welsh Space Invaders' online game was sent in an unsolicited email to a database of hundreds of businesses and journalists who would be targeted throughout the campaign.

The link took the audience to a retro computer game with the aim of defeating advancing aliens from attacking famous Welsh landmarks. After a short time a rogue alien ship kills the player and a message then appeared saying that like the aliens, e-Criminals don't play by the rules, with a call-to-action to visit the e-Crime Wales website.

The prank story achieved coverage in key target business press and created a buzz on Twitter.

Following the launch, a media campaign dovetailed with a social media campaign, with Twitter and business-focused Linked-In used to further spread campaign messages.
Regular columns were secured in the media to give e-Crime police officers a platform to communicate key messages. The team reacted to the news agenda, using hooks such as Patrick Swayze's sad death, to give a Welsh perspective on a global problem, in addition to issuing planned targeted releases. An interview with BBC's The One Show was secured for steering group member and Home Office-led Get Safe Online chief Tony Neate on eBay fraud.

WWPR worked with police officers to identify companies who had fallen victim to e-Crime and had a positive story about support from e-Crime Wales. Real-life stories brought an ‘it could happen to you' element to the campaign and helped drive summit registrations.

Results

A survey of Welsh businesses in August 2009 found that awareness of e-Crime Wales was 19%, up 10% from the previous year. The next survey in July 2010 found awareness was up another 5% to 24%.More than 68% of press coverage running up to the Summit included e-Crime Wales' website, and prompted businesses to register. The e-Crime Wales Summit attracted 463 delegates, beating the original target.

120 pieces of coverage were achieved - 60 print articles, 51 online and 9 broadcasts.

Print coverage generated a PR value over £320,000, a ten to one return on investment, and media exposure resulted in over 12 million opportunities to see and hear messages.

Don't take our word for it....

Katherine Hibbert, e-Crime Project Manager:

"The Working Word team has given us a broad reach in terms of media coverage, not only in conventional press but also online media which is vital to reach our target audience. The 2009 e-Crime Wales Summit in its fifth year had more media coverage than ever before ensuring that the Summit maintains its place as the largest SME focused e-Crime prevention event in Europe. The hard work of the team at Working Word ensures that Wales remains a recognised region of excellence in e-Crime prevention."