Selling the MPD: Marketing consultants try to spruce up department’s slogan, reputation

The Minneapolis Police Department recently announced that it’s giving its squad car fleet a retro look, complete with white-on-black design, a shield in place of the City of Lakes logo, and a new slogan. No more will Minneapolis police promise merely to protect and to serve; now squad car doors will announce that the MPD means “To Protect With Courage, To Serve With Compassion.” (MPD squads now will also bear the legend, “Serving since 1867.”)

The new verbiage comes courtesy of a marketing consultant the MPD hired last summer. The firm, Tom Dupont and Associates — whose past clients have included Cargill, Pillsbury and Pizza Hut — was charged with developing a marketing strategy to increase the cultural diversity of the department’s work force. So far, the firm has billed the MPD $49,137 for its services, based on a tally of invoices provided to the Minnesota Monitor.

Continued: Click “Read More”In an interview with the Monitor, Tom Dupont concedes that not everyone was sold on the new slogan.

“Some cops wanted to keep the old one,” he notes. “They wanted to stick to the traditional. At first, the chief didn’t want to get rid of the old one either. In general, people don’t like change. But I kept pushing for it.”

To Dupont, it all seemed a no-brainer: The new slogan, he explains, speaks to “what the police do and how they do it. Like all good brands, it is aspirational. It’s not just a slogan. It’s a way of conducting police business.”

The MPD is getting more than a couple of additional nouns for its money, however. Dupont and Associates are producing a whole raft of promotional materials: posters, pamphlets, advertising — all of it, says Dupont, hammering home the words “courage” and “compassion.” Words like that emphasize that it’s all about making a difference in the community, Dupont reckons.

“We think we nailed it. We think it’s the right message to attract women and minorities,” Dupont says.

The MPD has a long way to go where diversity is concerned. Currently, the department’s own statistics indicate that just 162 of the MPD’s 879 sworn officers, or about 18 percent, belong to minority groups. Of those, 66 people are black, 41 are Hispanic, 25 are Native American, and 30 are of Asian descent. Minorities make up 37 percent of the city’s population, according to U.S. Census data from 2000.

In its original request for bids on its branding project, the MPD stipulated that “The ultimate goal is to recruit and hire a quality diverse police workforce who can protect, serve, and communicate with the growing multicultural community, specifically new immigrants.” Also named in the original request for proposals, among other things, is a requirement to address affirmative recruitment goals that are linked to the MPD’s federal mediation agreement.