Data & AI-powered campaign
London Mayor’s Office:
Knife Crime
Slashing London’s knife crime numbers
using cutting-edge tech and insights.
Problem - Knife crime in London had increased by 24% in a single year. The Mayor’s office had reached out to 13–18-year-olds to discourage them from carrying knifes and blades. But their advice had fallen on deaf ears. They realised that the target audience wouldn’t listen to older authority figures – they’d only listen to their own peer group.
The Big Idea – Create the definitive voice of the knife crime generation who could talk kids out of carrying knives.
Creative Execution – An Artificial Intelligence, codenamed Aaron was created using the data that knife crime victims had left behind after their deaths - Aaron then persuades at-risk kids not to carry knives.
Finding Aaron
In the weeks and months leading up to this pitch, dozens of young black men had been stabbed to death. We encountered the family of one, who were keen to do something radical to help prevent future deaths, in the name of their son, Aaron.
After several conversations with them about what we were hoping to achieve with this campaign, they offered to hand over all of Aaron’s digital data left behind after his death.
NOTE: Aaron is a pseudonym.
Phase 1: Creation
In todays world, when we die, we leave much of ourselves behind. Our personalities, beliefs, and tone of voice continue to exist in digital form... so does Aarons. He lives on through his social media profiles, browser histories, and his extensive digital footprint.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence enabled us to take this data and turn it into an avatar - a fully-fledged digital chatbot version of Aaron that continues to grow and learn as new information is plugged into it. This extraordinary process is called Augmented Eternity.
When built, this augmented eternity chatbot version of Aaron would...
Engage - It can talk with kids in a straight-forward, down-to-earth manner, using lingo, slang and insider knowledge prevalent in the demographic.
Convert - Because he is a kid (albeit in digital form) Aaron can help advise affected children on how to lay down their knives in a way that resonates with them.
Phase 2: Engage
Where he appears, the audience can engage with him in an incredibly straight forward way, with few barriers to entry.
You can drop into a conversation with Aaron in as little as 20 seconds.
Phase 3: A clever media buy
Extensive media planning expertise, data science and insights from focus groups determined there were a number of places where Aaron could appear online.
This, coupled with an extraordinarily generous media buy from Google ensured that Aaron had a tangible presence alongside knife-glorifying content like Drill music videos - these were placements that brands wouldn't touch but were perfect for Aaron.
Phase 4: Contextual OOH
Aaron really comes into his own when combined with out-of-home advertising that has been selected through contextual relevance.
OOH sites are chosen based on their proximity to real knife crime events.
Real-time data gives Aaron any number of immediately arresting statements and finally, NFC allows passers-by to start an immediate conversation with him.
Final Phase: An Aaron for every London borough
Aaron, the augmented eternity chatbot we resurrected is incredibly useful for combatting knife crime in Croydon - where he used to live.
This was because the data he left behind was filled with insights and lingo used by gangs in and around the Croydon area.
Plans for the future include creating a bespoke Augmented Eternity chatbot for each and every borough in London.
So what happened next?
The Mayor’s office loved the campaign, purchased the concept, then shelved it.
Instead, they rolled out a paint-by-numbers campaign that proved highly ineffective and struggled to reach the youth audience they were targeting. Knife Crime figures continue to go up. Since this campaign was presented, there have been over 250 fatal stabbings in the capital.