Case Study

First Responder Technologies

“Threat Detection”

Challenge

First Responder Technologies (FRT) is a wireless threat detection company that recently launched a successful IPO. FRT is seeking customers and clients to purchase groundbreaking technologies that use Wi-Fi signals to prevent and safely defuse public attacks involving concealed weapons. 

The company asked us to create a Statement of Values underlying the company’s core commitments about ethical issues related to surveillance technology.  

Burrard’s principal worked with First Responder’s CEO, board and advisors (including Canada’s former Minister of Public Safety, the former Commissioner of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and a former US ambassador) to create a Statement of Values to address many of the contentious issues related to modern surveillance.  

The company’s opposition to racial and socio-economic profiling, often associated with traditional methods of threat detection, is one of their key commitments. 

The Statement of Values is now on their website, and the company now requires their partners to commit to these values in their commercial agreements.

FRT then asked us to produce an advertisement to show that reliably preventing racial or socio-economic profiling requires a technology that doesn’t discriminate, and instead agnostically detects threats before acts of violence can occur.

Process

We created an ad (for both TV and digital) to generate awareness about the company’s core mission, help FRT to define their public-interest brand as they progress to their next stage of development.  

Although the ad was to appear in Canada, we factored Canadian and American audiences, regulators and political environment into account when developing the narrative to provide the company with the flexibility to use it in the US when they were in a position to do so.  We decided to zero-in on the issue of socio-economic profiling, an important issue in both countries.  

The story begins with a student, a love interest, and a teacher going through their day, as a threat to the school required police intervention.  Creating a sequence of encounters between them, we compelled the viewer to come to their own conclusions about who posed the threat, only to surprise them at the end, when they discover that the threat was detected elsewhere and the real perpetrator (who the viewer never sees) was taken into custody, and everyone is safe. 

A longer 60-second version featuring the school principal as an additional character was also developed.

Commercial (DIGITAL + TV) – WATCH HERE

Outcome

	Branding: Ensured brand was appropriate for all digital channels avoided the use of violence and weapons imagery, as seen on Business News Network (Bloomberg BNN)
	Narrative Development: Worked with the company to develop Values Statement
	Public Affairs: Worked with board and C-Suite to ensure all elements of brand and vision were incorporated to reflect a public facing commercial for domestic and international audiences, and their respective regulatory environments.
	Content Creation: Produced a 30-second and 60-second commercials, for TV, digital, and website