SECTOR
Police
CLIENT
Dennis
Police Department & Town of Dennis (MA)
GOAL
Assist client in effectively communicating its policy message to a wide, targeted audience, achieving its goal of reducing calls for service and arrests on July 4 at town beaches.
Background
Thousands of beachgoers descend on Cape Cod beaches every Fourth of July. In Dennis, recent years saw a troubling trend of large influxes of partiers creating disturbances, fighting, assaults, overconsuming alcohol, and getting injured or sick. In 2023, these crowd issues forced local law enforcement to close the beach mid-afternoon to preserve public safety. Left behind was an extraordinary amount of trash, which included aluminum beer cans, towels, clothing, shoes, broken glass, broken coolers, beach chairs and other items. Over a dozen people were arrested that day.
Residents called the incident “a disaster” and “disgusting.” The event received negative local and national media coverage, causing Dennis significant reputational harm. Further, there was a potential financial threat as the Cape Cod community relies heavily on summer tourism.
The Town’s elected and appointed leaders spent the following months developing new rules and regulations regarding Fourth of July beach activity. The Town, lacking — as most small towns do — the bandwidth to support a large messaging campaign, turned to JGPR in June 2024, recognizing the need to communicate their plans effectively.
Concept
With only three weeks to go before the holiday, JGPR staff sprang into action and created a comprehensive communications plan that included writing multiple press releases, hosting a press conference, conducting aggressive media relations, shooting a video, creating social media infographics, and writing social media posts. This integrated multimedia communications campaign would help to reach the identified audience targets in a timely and effective manner.
Impact
Due to the efforts of JGPR’s communication campaign, the story got over 110 media placements locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
More importantly, the calls for service for the Dennis Police Department dropped by 75% on July 4th and there were no arrests made at any town beaches that day.
The success of our work led to the Dennis Police Department hiring our services again in 2025 for a similar campaign, where we helped to announce the expansion of the successful beach regulations on July 4th. This time, as part of the campaign, we created six Facebook Reels in four different languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole) that had over 60,000 views in the weeks leading up to July 4th. The results were once again outstanding, with zero arrests on the beaches on July 4 for the second year in a row and a 92% drop in calls for service at the beaches between 2023-2025.
What the client says
Dennis Police Chief John Brady:
“The John Guilfoil Public Relations Firm was referred to us from another law enforcement agency, and from the first day we sat down with the JGPR team, we recognized how professional, proactive, and knowledgeable they truly are. The team was able to quickly build a communication strategy for the operations plan using our department’s website, press releases, and exposure throughout New England with the news media. We were very impressed by how rapidly the team was able to put together a plan that significantly increased our media exposure.
The 2024 July 4th week showed some exceptional results for the department and the community we serve. The JGPR team was able to exceed all of our goals for the operation. I would highly recommend John Guilfoil Public Relations to any agency looking for a result-driven public relations firm.”
From Town Administrator Elizabeth Sullivan:
“On behalf of the Town of Dennis, your communication assistance was a critical component of ensuring the safety of all at our beaches during our busy holiday week. Thank you to you and your entire team!”
Award-Winning Campaign
JGPR won a Silver Anvil Award in the Most Effective Campaign on a $5,000 to $10,000 Budget category for our work with the Dennis Police Department and the Town of Dennis in 2024.
The Silver Anvil is considered the benchmark of excellence in the public relations industry. It is often called the “Pulitzer Prize of Public Relations.”
Media Results
From June 19 through July 8, 2024.