Cyber Security Challenge UK
Proof was commissioned to build a social media strategy for the launch of the Cyber Security Challenge UK – a government-backed initiative to increase the number of home-grown cyber security professionals working in the UK. The target was to secure 200 registrations for the Challenge by the end of August 2010.
Our strategy
We worked closely with one of the Challenge consortium partners, PwC, to build a devilishly complex cipher that we uploaded to the Challenge website. This attention grabber brought the target audience to the website and gave them a task that would compare their skills with others.
We set up a Twitter profile and Facebook page to broadcast the availability of the puzzle to anyone that wanted to test their ability and help raise awareness of the Challenge among the target audience.
Finally, we asked all 15 sponsors, most of whom had their own substantial online communities, to post information about the Challenge and the cipher to their followers and further broadcast the launch of the Challenge and the availability of the cipher.
The results
The launch on Mon 26 July 2010 was a great success – the target number of registrations for the first month was exceeded within the first day.
Within the first six hours of the launch:
- 350 people were following the Challenge on Twitter profile or signed up to the Facebook page
- 1500 were registered for the Challenge
One week on, there were 800 online followers, 3300+ registrations, and 1000+ proposed solutions to the cipher.
The best outcome is that the target audience has developed into a community. Experts are posting solutions and giving hints and tips to help less experienced participants to crack the code just so they can receive a congratulations email from the Challenge Team. They are also collaborating to build teams that can compete in future competitions.
Audience opinion
Several blogs have been posted about the Challenge and the process of solving it, including the winner. This blog shows the Challenge was pitched at exactly the right level and reached exactly the right people.
