The holiday season is a time of mixed emotions — fun activities, Christmas carols and family visits. It also brings the sometimes-loved, often-hated Elf on the Shelf. Parents love the reactions their children have seeing what the elf will do each morning, and that’s what drives them to make the effort — and believe me, it is an effort.
Coming up with new ideas and things for the elf to do — and remembering to do it every night — can be very difficult. How many times have parents sat up, startled in the middle of the night, because they forgot to move that dang elf? Is the effort worth the reward? That’s the same question departments ask when they decide to take on a department Elf on the Shelf. Is the effort worth the reward? And what exactly is the reward?
The power of Officer OVee
For the past two years, our department has used an elf named Officer OVee. His name comes from our community’s nickname, “The OV” for Oro Valley. Officer OVee arrives on December 1, on loan from the North Pole to investigate elf hijinks, and leaves on Christmas — giving us 25 days of content to come up with.
Many members of the department ask why I do it and if I enjoy it. Well, the answer to the second part of that question is I hate that silly little elf. Coming up with 25 new and creative ideas is a challenge. But the answer to the first part? It’s a tool that is very effective in manipulating social media algorithms in our favor, which is a great reward if done successfully.
Three key messaging strategies
We use Officer OVee to accomplish three main types of messaging:
- Highlighting different sections of the department: One post will showcase various divisions like patrol, dispatch, or records, helping inform the public about the many aspects of the department they might not otherwise see.
- Sharing safety messages: Another post will focus on important safety topics like seatbelt use, speeding, or crime trends. These messages align with current issues in our community — this year, we focused on speeding and online scams.
- Injecting humor through elf mischief: The last type of post is where OVee gets into trouble — crashing drones, disassembling electronics, messing up filing systems, or making a mess in general. These posts tend to get the most engagement. Of course, no actual damage is done, and when it looks like it could have been, we add a funny disclaimer like “No drones were harmed in the making of this post.” On National Cupcake Day, OVee got to the cupcakes before the officers and made quite the mess.
Why engagement matters
Social media success depends on engagement. We all know that platforms are all about algorithms, and the challenge for communicators is getting those algorithms to work in our favor. Every time a follower clicks like, comments, or shares a post, it increases the likelihood they will see future posts. If they interact with a post every day for a month, chances are, any critical messages we send later — whether about a safety issue, an emergency, or a missing person — will show up in their feed when it matters most.
Using humor to strengthen emergency communication
Our job as communicators is to get the department’s message out as effectively and accurately as possible. In most PIO basic courses and other trainings, they talk about the “95% vs. 5%" rule — 95% of emergency messaging is spent on educating, preparing, and teaching people where to get accurate information in a crisis. If you send out an emergency message but it doesn’t show up in the feeds of the people who need to see it, then effective communication isn’t happening.
Taking advantage of unique, engaging, and sometimes humorous messages can be a great way to get that message in front of people — and a great use of that 95%.
