Ministry of Justice: An Extraordinary Job. Done By Someone Like You
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) faced a prison staffing crisis, with vacancies at 78 of the 109 prisons and more than one in twenty in danger of being below the staffing threshold to operate safely. This logistical challenge, with strict catchment areas, ambitious recruitment targets, and the need to avoid public scrutiny due to taxpayer-funded communications, made implementation difficult.
With 82% of the population having access to BVOD on a TV set, we saw an opportunity to use addressable TV to build the employer brand in a hyperlocal way. Through Sky Media’s partnership with Captify, we combined search data and Sky’s AV offering to deliver the new An Extraordinary Job. Done By Someone Like You message to jobseekers in relevant catchments. This pioneering approach unlocked high-propensity custom audiences.
Using Sky AdSmart’s 10M+ subscribers, we layered in Captify’s search intelligence data—focusing on households searching for terms like ‘Job search’, ‘Job fayres’, ‘CV writing’, ‘Career resources’, ‘Career planning’, and ‘Apprentice courses’. We ran a test burst across 6 BARB regions with regional targeting around key priority prisons, using a powerful 30” asset showing what it’s really like to work in a prison.
The campaign delivered strong results. Positive perceptions rose from 36% to 43%, while relevance near prisons increased from 25% to 46%. We saw a 170% uplift in prompted ad recall, with a 24.3 percentage point difference between exposed and unexposed groups. Most importantly, it prompted 11,776 applications — nearly four times the 3,000 target — and website visits tripled.