It's National Identity Fraud week in the UK as well?

I mentioned the fact that next week is National Identity Fraud Awareness Week in Australia. What I failed to realise is that this week is National Identity Fraud Prevention Week here in the UK. I've either been REALLY tuned out of the mainstream media or their marketing needs some work.

The same company is behind both initiatives. I gave them a bit of a backhanded compliment remarking that I thought it was a good marketing campaign to sell their paper shredders. But the execution needs a little work and they need to pay attention to the finer details starting with:

1. The URLs - the Australian site's URL is http://www.stopidtheft.com.au while the UK site is http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk. No wonder I couldn't find the UK site when I first heard about the Australian one. Also, both campaigns officially use the term "Fraud". Why the heck does the Australian URL have "theft" in it? Fellowes need to hire some "consistency police". To that effect, I rescind my kudos to them for being educated enough to use the term "fraud" instead of "theft".
   
2. Why does the UK get a "Prevention Week" while Australia gets an "Awareness Week"? Are they implying the UK have gone beyond awareness and need to think about prevention while Australia are behind the times?
   

On the other hand, I'm probably just being really picky.

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.