National Identity Fraud Awareness Week Australia

Here's a first, at least for Australia. A company has taken the initiative to raise awareness of Identity Fraud.

National Identity Fraud Awareness Week Australia is being run in partnership with Crime Stoppers Australia, the Australian Taxation Office and Veda Advantage (who do credit scoring of some sort). Apparently they've also run it in the UK, Canada and Japan.

The most interesting part of this is that the company responsible for the initiative is Fellowes. And what do they do? They sell office equipment! Strange you say? That's what I thought too, until I realised that one of the things they suggest people do to help prevent Identity Fraud is to shred all documents. The shredders they suggest? Fellowes shredders of course!

So here we have an office equipment company running a marketing campaign to sell shredders by promoting Identity Fraud awareness. I might sound a little cynical here, but I actually think it's a really good "think outside the box" marketing campaign. I'd never heard of Fellowes before, but now I have. They also picked up on something people are REALLY concerned about and will naturally take notice of.

Extra points to them for using the term "Identity Fraud" and NOT "Identity Theft". Kudos also for getting the ATO and Crime Stoppers involved.