Situation: A desperately understaffed Dutch Police Force faced an increase in unsolved cases. What could help? Everyday citizens. Prompt eyewitness tips became the critical divide between solving crimes and letting them go cold.

Brief: The traditional method of going door-to-door for witness accounts became untenable for this strapped Force. The Dutch Police needed a revolutionary approach to engage a broader audience of potential witnesses, effectively modernizing their outreach efforts.

Objective: The mission was clear: forge a new, more efficient path to gather essential tips that could crack cases wide open. The urgency to adapt and innovate was not just about keeping pace—it was about redefining the future of law enforcement in the Netherlands.

Our idea was simple: we could leverage the most powerful tool used to reach everyday people—the sophisticated mechanisms of media—and redirect it for societal good. Typically harnessed to drive conversion, we envisioned our performance marketing algorithms as instruments of community engagement.

We transformed our media algorithms into a real-time crime-fighting engine. Introducing: S.I.M: Special Investigative Media

Within minutes of a crime occurring anywhere in the Netherlands and being logged by the police, our proprietary marketing platform automatically deploys hundreds of assets calling for witness account in digital media to a geotargeted population, down to the very zip code. Calls to action urge potential witness to leave urgently-needed tips on the police’s website.

We transformed our media algorithms into a real-time crime-fighting engine. Introducing: S.I.M: Special Investigative Media

Within minutes of a crime occurring anywhere in the Netherlands and being logged by the police, our marketing technology platform is notified, analyzes data, and automatically builds a series of creative assets tailored dynamically to a crime’s specifics: its location, time, severity, type, and more. Once complete, hundreds of assets calling for witness accounts are deployed in digital media to a geotargeted population of potential witnesses, down to the very zip code.

Our partnership with the Police began with a simple idea in August ‘22, with S.I.M launching in earnest in March ‘23. Here’s how it works:

Whenever a crime is uploaded by the police into their database, our AI-powered Feed Management System is notified in real-time and instantly begins analyzing and organizing unstructured data (location, time, severity, images, surveillance footage, etc), preparing it for dynamic creative optimization.

Then, our advanced Creative Builder automatically generates assets customized to a specific crime. Depending on the data available and the severity of the crime, these striking assets feature maps of the crime’s location, CTV images, video collected from witnesses, or even simple text.

We employ hyperlocal targeting, using a proprietary Mapbox API, to direct assets precisely to a crime’s location, which are automatically deployed across Programmatic (AdForm), Search (Google, Microsoft), and Social (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat). This ensures messages reach the right people, at the right place, at the right time. CTAs drive citizens to leave a tip on the police’s website.

If a crime remains unresolved within 10 days, assets optimize to highlight new uncovered details from police or witness tips. Once a crime’s solved, campaigns are taken down. Case closed, thanks to media.

In its lifespan, Special Investigative Media has created a more efficient police force with a deeper connection to the public. And, our tool activated the most powerful public safety network ever assembled:

17,500 cases leveraged S.I.M

50M Impressions

8M Unique People Reached

16% Click Through Rate, compared to platform average of 2.5%

450,000 citizens clicked on assets

500 cases solved and counting

Our client stated S.I.M’s impact best: “Investigation marketing enables us to ask the right questions in the right place, on a scale we could not have imagined before.... This the future of crime solving.”

Special Investigative Media created a more efficient police force with a deeper connection to the public. Our tool activated the most powerful public safety network ever assembled:

17,500 cases leveraged S.I.M

50M Impressions

8M Unique People Reached

16% Click Through Rate, compared to platform average of 2.5%

450,000 citizens clicked on assets

500 cases solved and counting

A year into S.I.M, the Dutch Police Force is increasing investment into the program by 25%. They even appointed a new role: Special Investigative Marketer.

Our client even stated: “Investigation marketing enables us to ask the right questions in the right place, on a scale we could not have imagined before.... This the future of crime solving.”

We repurposed the power of media to keep citizens safer. And in doing so, we changed the future of crime solving as we know it.