No one thinks that they would fall for a scam. In psychology, it’s called ‘optimism bias,’ causing a person to believe that they’re less at risk of experiencing a negative event compared to others. The ASC was trying to educate people who didn’t think that they were susceptible to fraud. Telling them was only going so far, we knew showing them would have a much greater effect. To show that it can happen to anyone, we executed the perfect con.

Using the red flags of investment fraud throughout the campaign, we promoted and held a fake real estate investment seminar featuring a fictitious financier and investment firm. Midway through the seminar, we revealed the con. We shared the story of Fred Turbide, an Albertan businessman, who took his own life after being defrauded for more than $300,000. The seminar and story illustrated that investment fraud really could happen to anyone.

The campaign was designed and executed over a three-month period starting in January 2017.

Our online con launched on February 8 and was promoted to a targeted audience in Calgary from February 8 to 20. The seminar was held on February 22. Post-event, media materials and video were created and pushed to media through a content centre as well as targeted pitches to tier 1 media during Fraud Prevention Month starting on March 6.

Numerous on-air interviews were secured for the ASC investor education spokesperson, including CBC, Global, and CTV.

Because the ASC’s mandate is educating Albertans, we were able to cover the gamut of possible outlets that would reach their target audiences. We also activated our messages online and with key influencers, increasing our reach to their secondary audience.

There was additional interest in the campaign by national media which aided in highlighting our story to Albertans and beyond.

Earned media objectives were measured against the benchmark set by previous Fraud Prevention Month earned-media campaigns put on by the ASC. Previous campaigns have provided good earned media results based on industry standard and had moved the dial of awareness slightly year-over-year according to previous survey results. While it’s still too early for awareness numbers for the 2017 campaign, based on what we’ve seen in the past and this year’s significant increase in media impressions, we fully expect the 2017 campaign to deliver a significant increase.

Our campaign generated close to 20 million impressions – 1,293% over the target benchmark. 60 media hits were generated putting us 500% over target and interviews exceeded objective by 83%. This included a 500-word piece on Vice.com extolling the virtues of our efforts in “…taking this shit to the next level.” Social media engagements were 612% over the objective and video views of the campaign video were 1,674% more than target projected with a small paid spend. We also achieved an 80% MRP score. Our coverage included hits on all major media outlets in the Alberta region across broadcast, print, and online. 100% of media hits had a positive or neutral sentiment towards the campaign.

In terms of web analytics, visitors to the website and pageviews quadrupled from the previous period.