South Wales Police

The opportunity

In June 2024, Cardiff’s Principality Stadium welcomed popstar Taylor Swift and her 70,000 fans for a sell-out performance of her Eras tour. For South Wales Police, successful policing of major events and engaging communities forms part of its Strategic Policing Requirement. The force wanted to ensure the safety of attendees and keep disruption to a minimum, but also boost the accessibility and visibility of Police Officers throughout the event and draw attention to its ‘Safer Summer’ campaign. In addition, South Wales Police wanted to target a traditionally hard-to-reach young demographic.

The approach

During the Eras tour, Taylor Swift’s fans started the trend of trading friendship bracelets before, during and after each concert. South Wales Police decided to embrace this ritual, making bracelets of their own to swap with fans to promote its ‘Safer Summer’ campaign and to engage younger citizens in a fun and relevant way.

The bracelets and supporting content featured South Wales Police’s #SaferSummer hashtag and QR code, where fans could navigate to discover lesser-known tips for staying safe at crowded events. Police Officers traded bracelets with fans, often stopping to chat and pose for a selfie.

The results

South Wales Police achieved some of the year’s highest engagement from this event and campaign, with the comms team extending the content over a longer period to maximise results:

South Wales Police also received positive feedback from community members, who reported feeling safe as a result of the police’s visibility on the streets and the ‘Safer Summer’ campaign. Colleagues at South Wales Police also praised the comms team and efforts of Officers to engage with communities.

By participating with the crowd’s enthusiasm for the event, and engaging informally with fans, the Police Officers boosted their visibility and also created a sense of camaraderie with attendees. They succeeded in showing a ‘human’ side to a public sector organisation sometimes viewed as cold and impersonal. In turn, they also delivered on South Wales Police’s strategic objectives to ensure safety during this major event and to proactively engage with citizens.

On awarding the award, the Golden Ele judging panel said:

“Connecting with a younger audience for any public service can be tricky. Using the opportunity of Taylor Swift’s concert was not just a really well-executed campaign with amazing results, but showed intent as part of their strategy to engage with a hard-to-reach demographic.”