The New Zealand Police have paid $10K to have rainbow stripes and lettering painted on a police vehicle. The “Rainbow Car” was seen at Auckland and Wellington Pride festivals earlier this year as part of a PR stunt designed to attract more LGBTQIA+ recruits into the police force.
The police have revealed that the $10,000 was spent out of the recruitment marketing budget to have the car painted and detailed. The cost of the car was justified by the amount of social media likes garnered by the car. A post of the Rainbow Car on the official NZ Police Instagram received 4,176 likes, amounting to roughly $2.50 per like.
Salient contacted Socialites, a social media management company, to enquire about how much it would cost for an Instagram post like this to get this many likes. A representative for Socialites responded, saying, “We quote on time and skill for the job, which ranges depending on the scope of work and business objectives. However, there are like-bots/click-farms that can get you likes for about $9 per 1000… but they are a complete waste of money”.
For reference Buzzoid, a website that provides Instagram likes, offers 5000 likes for $39.99 USD ($54.76 NZD). While presumably these are bots, this would amount to a saving of almost $9940 for the police and could be spent on other community services. Fake bot accounts also probably have a higher opinion of the police.
However in our investigation Salient neglected to enquire about the cost of getting this many likes on a controversial post such as this, considering the NZ Police force’s troubling history with the LGBTQIA+ community. It is unclear if this would cost $2.50 per like.
The “Rainbow Car” will not be pressed into service as a regular police vehicle in the hopes that homophobic criminals will continue to feel comfortable being arrested.
*Disclaimer: This is shit news.*