New Campaign Against Mobile Phone Robbery
The UK government is starting a new media campaign to remind potential buyers of stolen mobile phones that they wont work in the UK. "If you buy a stolen mobile phone you'll waste your money and look foolish", is the central message of the Government's new £500,000 national publicity campaign.
The radical advert designs use abbreviated 'txt lngwij' and play on the current trend for making pictures from punctuation and distributing them via mobiles and social networking websites such as Facebook and Myspace. The message is blunt: now that the mobile phone industry blocks stolen phones within 48 hours, buying one is a waste of money.
Primarily aimed at 16-25 year-olds, the adverts will feature in magazines including Heat, Zoo and Nuts, on websites such as Ebay, Loot and Gumtree and be emblazoned on phone boxes and litter bins in youth social hotspots from this Monday 25 June.
Network subscriptions in the UK have increased from 17 million to 72 million in last eight years and although the majority of thefts occur when a handset is left unattended, mobile phones are linked to robbery. A phone is stolen in around 52 per cent of robberies and is the only item stolen in around 28 per cent. This campaign is another weapon in the fight against acquisitive and violent crime.
Crime Reduction Minister Baroness Scotland said "I want this campaign to take the bottom out of the illicit phone market entirely. Young people should be left in no doubt that stolen phones won?t work anymore. The prize will be a dramatic reduction in mobile phone crime overall making young people safer."
Chairman of the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum Jack Wraith said "In July 2006, the UK mobile phone industry introduced a Crime Reduction Charter to tackle mobile handset theft. One of the commitments in that Charter was to block 80 per cent of mobile handsets across all UK networks within 48 hours of them being reported as stolen."
The campaign is scheduled to run until mid-August. "
Posted to the site on 26th June 2007