Chicago Police Department
Building a digital recruitment engine from scratch to help the Chicago Police Department attract a new generation of community-oriented officers during one of the most challenging hiring environments in the department's history.
Overview
Transforming law enforcement recruitment through data-driven digital strategy, compelling creative, and multi-year campaign execution that delivered measurable results.
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15K+
USER REACH
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750
CANDIDATES PER MONTH
The Challenge
In 2020, the Chicago Police Department faced an unprecedented staffing crisis. After a hiring surge in 2016-2018 that brought in 2,400 new officers, the department confronted a perfect storm of challenges that threatened its ability to maintain adequate staffing levels and serve Chicago's diverse communities effectively.
The applicant pool was drying up dramatically. Where 20,000 candidates had taken the police officer exam in 2012-2013, by 2020 the numbers had plummeted. The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered traditional recruitment channels, civil unrest following George Floyd's murder created a hostile environment for law enforcement recruitment, and unprecedented attrition saw over 1,000 officers retire in 2021 alone—with expectations of losing 700-800 officers annually going forward. The department faced 1,000+ vacancies across all ranks, creating a staffing emergency that demanded immediate, innovative action.
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The challenge was compounded by the department's transformation goals. CPD was undergoing comprehensive reform under a consent decree, implementing new use-of-force policies, expanding training requirements, and pursuing CALEA accreditation for best practices. The department needed to attract a fundamentally different type of candidate—not the traditional "warrior mentality" recruit, but community-oriented officers with lived experiences that genuinely reflected Chicago's neighborhoods. They needed candidates who understood local culture, had social service backgrounds, and were motivated by a desire to serve rather than simply chase criminals.
Most critically, the department needed to dramatically increase Black applicant representation while maintaining strong Hispanic recruitment. They needed to triple their applicant pool to 14,000 by the end of 2022, with only 5,400 applicants as of December 2021. The department had removed barriers to entry (reducing the 60 college credit requirement, reconsidering tattoo and marijuana policies) and enhanced benefits (tuition reimbursement, generous salary, master's degree funding), but they had no comprehensive digital recruitment strategy, no proven creative assets, no performance benchmarks, and no roadmap for achieving these ambitious goals.
Chicago Police Department came to Birk Creative with a blank slate—no past digital campaign performance data, no established conversion metrics, no tested creative messaging, and an urgent need to build a recruitment engine from scratch that could deliver results in an extraordinarily challenging environment.
The Solution
Birk Creative developed and executed a comprehensive, multi-year digital recruitment campaign that combined strategic audience research, compelling creative development, sophisticated multi-channel media buying, and rigorous performance tracking to transform CPD's recruitment outcomes.
Strategic Foundation and Research
The campaign began with intensive discovery and audience research to understand the motivations, barriers, and media consumption patterns of target candidates. Rather than relying on generic law enforcement recruitment messaging, Birk Creative conducted deep stakeholder interviews with CPD leadership, analyzed demographic data across Chicago zip codes, and developed detailed candidate personas that reflected the department's transformation goals.
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The research revealed critical insights: candidates were motivated by career stability, competitive compensation, tuition reimbursement, and the opportunity to serve their communities—not by adrenaline-fueled "warrior" narratives. Black candidates in particular needed to see themselves reflected in recruitment materials and understand that CPD valued lived experience in Chicago neighborhoods as much as formal education. Hispanic candidates responded strongly to family-oriented messaging and career advancement opportunities.
These insights informed a comprehensive content and strategy matrix that mapped messaging themes to specific audience segments, channels, and campaign phases. The strategy emphasized benefits-driven messaging (high salary, exceptional benefits, college tuition reimbursement), community service framing ("Shine Your Light on Your Community"), and accessibility ("No prior law enforcement experience required").
Creative Development and Brand Assets
Birk Creative designed and produced a complete suite of recruitment creative assets from scratch, establishing a visual identity and messaging framework that would carry across all channels and campaign phases. The creative approach featured authentic photography of diverse CPD officers, bold typography, and clear benefit-driven headlines that immediately communicated value propositions.
The campaign developed multiple creative variations to test different messaging angles:
"High Salary. Exceptional Benefits. College Tuition Reimbursement."Leading with concrete financial benefits to attract career-minded candidates
"Choose YOUR why for applying to become a police officer"Emphasizing personal motivation and values alignment, featuring benefit callouts like "Earn a high salary," "Get college tuition reimbursement," "Receive professional development," "Participate in a close knit professional working environment," "Bring your vision of community service to life," and "Build into a retirement pension"
"Shine Your Light on Your Community."Community service-oriented messaging that positioned policing as an opportunity to give back: "Share your love of service! Combine your knowledge of local culture, ability to have real conversations with people in the neighborhoods and interest in connecting community service to a brand new career opportunity with the Chicago Police Department."
Each creative execution featured the CPD star badge for institutional credibility, authentic officer photography showcasing diversity, and clear calls-to-action directing candidates to check eligibility and take the Chicago Police Officer Exam. The consistent tagline "CHECK YOUR ELIGIBILITY TO TAKE THE CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER EXAM TODAY!" with explanatory copy ("You will be asked to register for an account. Once logged in, you will be directed to fill out the application to check your eligibility to take the Chicago Police Officer Exam. No prior law enforcement experience is required to take the exam.") removed friction from the application process.
Digital Landing Page Development
Birk Creative designed and built a custom recruitment landing page optimized for conversion. The landing page served as the central hub for all digital advertising traffic, providing detailed information about career benefits, application requirements, and the hiring process while capturing candidate information and directing qualified applicants to the eligibility check and exam registration.
The landing page architecture was designed for maximum conversion efficiency, with clear navigation, benefit-focused content hierarchy, authentic officer testimonials, and streamlined pathways to application. The page was optimized for mobile responsiveness (critical given target audience media consumption patterns) and integrated with CPD's applicant tracking systems to ensure seamless data flow.
Multi-Channel Digital Media Strategy
Birk Creative executed a sophisticated multi-channel digital advertising campaign across Google Search, Google Display Network, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. The media strategy was built on rigorous performance modeling that calculated required reach based on platform-specific conversion rates:
Facebook/Instagram average conversion rate: 9.21%
Google Search average conversion rate: 4.4%
Google Display average conversion rate: 0.57%
Using these benchmarks, Birk Creative calculated that to convert 750 candidates every two months, the campaign needed to reach 15,869 users. The media plan allocated budget across channels based on cost-per-click efficiency and conversion performance, with higher investment in Facebook/Instagram for top-of-funnel awareness and Google Search for high-intent candidate capture.
The campaign employed continuous A/B/C testing of ad creative, copy variations, audience targeting parameters, and bidding strategies to optimize performance. Monthly ad management included creative rotation, audience refinement based on demographic and behavioral data, bid adjustments to maximize cost-per-acquisition efficiency, and real-time budget reallocation to highest-performing channels.
Geographic and Demographic Targeting
Leveraging detailed Chicago zip code demographic data, Birk Creative developed hyper-targeted audience segments to reach Black and Hispanic candidates in specific neighborhoods. The campaign used geo-fencing, demographic overlays, interest-based targeting (social service professionals, military veterans, college students), and lookalike modeling based on successful CPD officer profiles to ensure ad spend reached the most qualified and motivated candidates.
Campaign Execution and Management
Birk Creative managed all aspects of campaign execution, including:
Monthly ad buy management — Budget allocation, bid management, and performance optimization across all platforms
Continuous content creation — New ad creative, copy variations, and landing page updates to maintain campaign freshness and test new messaging angles
Quarterly performance reporting — Detailed analytics on impressions, clicks, conversion rates, cost-per-acquisition, and demographic breakdowns to track progress against KPIs
Strategic recommendations — Data-driven insights on audience behavior, channel performance, and creative effectiveness to inform ongoing campaign refinement
Results
Birk Creative's recruitment campaign delivered measurable success in an extraordinarily challenging environment:
Built a recruitment engine from zero — Established CPD's first comprehensive digital recruitment strategy with no prior performance benchmarks or proven creative assets
Achieved target reach and conversion goals — Delivered 15,869+ user reach through multi-channel campaigns to convert 750 candidates every two months during peak campaign periods
Increased Black and Hispanic applicant representation — Targeted messaging and demographic-specific creative drove significant increases in diverse candidate applications
Optimized cost-per-acquisition — Continuous A/B/C testing and channel optimization reduced cost-per-click and improved conversion efficiency across all platforms
Established performance benchmarks — Created baseline conversion rate data and audience insights that informed ongoing campaign refinement and budget allocation
Multi-year campaign sustainability — Demonstrated campaign effectiveness, adapting strategy to changing market conditions and recruitment priorities
The campaign transformed CPD's recruitment capabilities, establishing a data-driven, scalable digital recruitment infrastructure that continues to deliver results in a competitive law enforcement hiring environment.
Impact & Positioning
Strategic Research and Planning: Conducting deep audience research to inform campaign strategy in complex, sensitive contexts
Creative Development: Designing compelling recruitment creative that balances institutional credibility with authentic, benefit-driven messaging
Digital Media Buying and Optimization: Managing sophisticated multi-channel campaigns with rigorous performance tracking and continuous optimization
Data-Driven Decision Making: Using conversion rate modeling and performance analytics to allocate budget and refine strategy
Crisis Response: Building effective recruitment solutions in extraordinarily challenging environments (pandemic, civil unrest, unprecedented attrition)
Long-Term Partnership: Delivering consistent results across multiple years and adapting strategy to evolving client needs
By starting from a blank slate and building a comprehensive recruitment engine that delivered measurable results, Birk Creative demonstrated the ability to tackle complex challenges with no roadmap, create scalable solutions under pressure, and execute sophisticated digital campaigns that achieve ambitious goals in competitive markets.