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The Sheriffs Are Coming

This project has been assigned the following categories: Marketing campaigns, Social media,

  • TV programme
  • PPC advertising
  • Facebook community

Client overview

The Sheriffs Office are experts in the enforcement of court judgments and orders, recovering debt and property on behalf of individuals, businesses and landlords.

Project overview

Having marketed The Sheriffs Office successfully to solicitors, businesses and landlords, the client wanted to reach the wider general public to educate them about High Court enforcement, as a strong and effective alternative to using a county court bailiff.

The primary challenge was that there was not the budget for a large scale marketing campaign to reach out to 50 million plus people.

So the Scaramanga team suggested reaching out to TV production companies to make a factual documentary series, following the work of High Court Enforcement Officers (HCEOs) and their agents.

We approached numberous TV production companies and had two that were very interested, one in conjunction with Channel 4 and the other with the BBC.
After a few meetings, the BBC commissioned the first series of "The Sheriffs Are Coming", which was shown on daytime TV as well as a "best bits" complication on primetime at 8pm.

The show ran for eight series and was extremely popular, reaching over 32 million people - approximately 62% of the UK adult population.

The programme was extremely popular with viewers and spawned a number of imitators - which is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.

32 million viewers

Broadcast Awards winner

"The Sheriffs Are Coming" won the award for Best Daytime Programme. The Broadcast Awards are the prestigious annual awards for the UK broadcasting industry, with the judging panel including senior executives from the broadcasting industry and Broadcast Magazine.

Behind the scenes

A man and a dog taking a selfie, with the dog sniffing the man's face
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A blue helicopter without rotor blades being lifted by a JCB crane
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Man smiling, standing in front of a filming camera
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2 men dressed smartly with arms folded, standing in front of a black van
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To support the campaign, Scaramanga has managed numerous social media and PPC campaigns, including retargeting, as well as setting up and managing a Facebook page for the programme.

Because the BBC does not give any form on endorsement to commercial organisations, the campaigns Scaramanga developed and implemented around the TV series were essential to drive enquiries into The Sheriffs Office, instead of to competitors.

We also worked with our client to ensure systems were in place to capture and manage incoming queries to the business, especially out of hours, to ensure no opportunity was missed.

PPC campaigns

We run many PPC and retargeting campaigns, as well as paid social for The Sheriffs Office. With one Twitter campaign, we acquired and retained over 3,000 followers. We run LinkedIn campaigns to acquire new prospects from the legal community to attend events and webinars. Below are some key stats from our business-to-business PPC campaigns:

  • 2.29 click through rate
  • £0.89 average cost per click
  • 17.3% conversion

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