Client
Politie Nederland
The Dutch police had a recruitment problem most organizations would recognize: how do you reach people who’ve never even considered you as an option? Traditional campaigns struggle to break through to young adults, especially at events where they’re there for entirely different reasons.
Heroes Dutch Comic Con presented both an opportunity and a challenge. Tens of thousands of visitors, many in the right age demographic, but all there to celebrate pop culture, gaming, and comics. Not to think about career prospects.
We created The Lineup: a gameshow inspired by the Dutch classic “Wie van de Drie,” reimagined for the gaming generation. Three people stand in front of a custom police lineup wall. Two are actors in cosplay. One is an actual police officer. The audience has to figure out who’s real.
The lineup wall itself carries cultural weight. From The Usual Suspects to Guardians of the Galaxy, the police lineup is instantly recognizable iconography. At Dutch Heroes Comic Con, surrounded by people celebrating fictional heroes and villains, it was a visual language the audience already spoke.
The roles weren’t the types of police you are used to seeing. They were cybersecurity experts tracking hackers, financial investigators following money trails, emergency dispatch specialists coordinating rapid responses, jobs requiring the same problem-solving and pattern recognition skills gamers develop through years of gameplay.
Hosted by Tess Milne (tv personality and avid gamer) with a jury of prominent Dutch gaming creators, StreamwithLien, Linktijger, and gaming magazine Power Unlimited’s Jacco, seated in gaming chairs, the show created entertainment that felt native to Comic Con while delivering the recruitment message without ever feeling like advertising.
Pre-event: Comic Con built anticipation through homepage banners, a newsletter to 127K subscribers, social content, and 15.000 printed venue maps. Discord messages and push notifications extended reach further.
Live activation: The Lineup transformed a 14-meter stage in the gaming hall into the weekend’s most talked-about experience. Rounds ran three times, with fresh lineups. A custom designed The Lineup wall made for an enticing photo opportunity for visitors during the whole weekend.
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Creator amplification: StreamwithLien livestreamed the experience for 50 minutes. Her Instagram stories and polls let followers guess alongside her. Linktijger involved his audience through his socials. Power Unlimited contributed live coverage and in-depth interviews with officers. Post-show Q&As humanized the roles, showing audiences that police work is done by people with similar interests and backgrounds.
700,000+ total impressions across all touchpoints:
Pre-event reach: 486K banner impressions, 127K newsletter sends, 59K social views, 14,700 physical maps distributed
Live engagement: 88K Instagram story views, 33K livestream views, 1,096 poll votes from actively engaged viewers
Post-event content: 126K total views across teasers, reveals, and highlight reels
The Lineup worked because it understood a fundamental truth: you can’t convince someone to consider a career they’ve initially ruled out by telling them why they’re wrong. You have to show them something that makes them reconsider on their own terms.
The format delivered four implicit messages without ever making them explicit: the police see and understand gamers; there are far more diverse roles than people realize; police work is done by people just like you,and they’re actively looking for people like you.
By partnering with gaming creators who could bring their communities into the experience through real-time interaction, we turned passive awareness into active participation, both at the event and online.
