2015 highly commended: British Army, Not-For-Profit Marketing - case study

In the late 2013 the Army recruiting environment was extremely tough: negative publicity surrounding Army redundancies, sharp increases in the youth employment rate, growing competitions from the Navy and the RAF, as well as increased confusion over the role of the Army Reserve (formerly known as the Territorial Army) meant the Army faced its most hostile recruiting environment for at least a decade.

Against this operating environment, the government’s promise to cut defence spending was putting Army Recruitment under pressure to reduce costs and deliver recruits for less money per application. JWT, supported by Mediacom, were briefed to create a communications campaign that reduced the media driven cost per application (CPA  - recruitment marketing's inverse equivalent of ROMI) by at least 50%.

The resulting campaign, More Than Meets The Eye, successfully demonstrated the Army could offer young people something they could no longer find on civvy street - the best of both worlds: real adventure and paid training they can bank on later in their career, whether part of full-time. The campaign uses a creative idea to bring these two seemingly disparate aspects of the offer to life in a highly engaging way.

In doing so the campaign: reinvigorated the perception that the Army is a skills provider, raised positive sentiment towards the Army Reserve; doubled the number of people identifying themselves as 'very interested' or 'going to apply' to the Army; achieved a 65% reduction in the average cost per media driven application, providing Army Recruitment with an impressive annual saving of £7 million.

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(Please note: parts of this case study may have been redacted for confidentiality purposes.)