Ad campaign helps cut gun crime

An advertising campaign helped reduce gun violence in London by 15 per cent over the past three years.

Now the Met's Stop The Guns campaign has won an award for advertising effectiveness.

The three-year campaign cost £750,000 and was also credited with increasing co-operation by the black community with the police by 86 per cent.

Gun crime in the rest of the country increased over the period.

Stop The Guns received the Grand Prix at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Effectiveness awards, known as the advertising industry's Oscars.

The campaign used a series of hard hitting posters displayed in areas with high gun crime rates. Although the message was aimed at young black men, the campaign attempted to rally the whole black community against the problem.

It also used a TV advert, an internet viral film, petrol pump adverts and an anti-gun rap song and video by "grime" group Roll Deep. Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, the London advertising agency behind the campaign, usually works on mainstream accounts, such as Waitrose, Debenhams and Tetley tea.

Andy Nairn, the agency's planning director, said: "The media was wary of reporting gun crime, there was a deep lack of trust in the police by the black community and the multi-billion-pound music, fashion and gaming industries were pushing the idea that guns are glamorous."

But he added: "Advertising doesn't work in a vacuum. The real heroes are the black community and officers working with this day to day."

A Met spokesman said: "Combined with community engagement and operational policing, advertising is part of an effective package targeting those who use guns in London."