Deep White

Pickpockets against payment cards

Campaign promoting payment by card

You understand security through fear. Calm is achieved after stress. Alarm systems are usually installed after burglaries. Furthermore people have an inner resentment against being taught: 'Do this. Do that. Enjoy! Choose! Buy!' Tired of being ordered about, people instinctively choose to do the exact opposite.

That is why the campaign, whose purpose was to popularise the use of payment cards, chose security as its strategic message, and in its implementation, involved pickpockets, habitual criminals and other dropouts (real ones who had been found guilty of robbery and filmed in Latvian prisons).

Explaining that payment cards were bad, how they affected business, reduce their hauls, how they de-motivate professional thieves and are ruining the trade, pickpockets suggested that people only carry cash. At the same time, the police highlighted the pick-pocketing problem as part of the campaign while banking specialists extolled the virtues of payment cards in combating pickpockets.

The campaign achieved a broad response, many journalists visiting an environment loved by thieves, the number 15 trolley bus, to attend a Seminar for Pickpockets. In turn, in cooperation with the police and bank specialists, the advantages of payment cards were explained in a tour of Latvia's regions, on the campaign website and in information leaflets available at banks.

The Pickpockets against payment cards campaign received a Golden Drum award at eastern Europe's most significant advertising festival.

Client: First Data Latvia