The police - the good guys

When I speak about branding at seminars, I usually let people associate to different brands by showing some logotypes. It is an interesting exercise. Last week I asked 400 persons to associate to “Polisen”, the Swedish Policeforce. The words were quite critical and hard. Someone associated to “law and order”, but mainly there were negative associations.

We have incidents in Sweden now where some specific persons in the policeforce have behaved badly. It wears off on the whole brand. Although we know that most policemen and policewomen do their job in a fantastic way, those incidents are really devastating to their rumour and their brand.

20 000 Swedish policemen and women have voted for values which they think are important to the policeforce. It has resulted in three keywords: engaged, effective and available. These words are supposed to pervade everything that is done by the police. However, they need to fill these words with a meaning in order to make them valuable and visible to the Swedish citizens.

Values in the Policeforce