Challenge
For more than 300 years, the British Army has been protecting
the UK’s interests at home and abroad, assisting with disaster
relief, and preventing conflict in numerous global theatres of
operations.
To ensure it continues to perform at the peak of its
capabilities, the Army relies on a regular intake of exceptional
recruits. However, with the interests and ambitions of its
target recruitment pools changing, it began to face a critical
challenge. The audience with a thirst for traditional frontline
military action simply wasn’t large enough to fill the ranks,
especially given the enormity of a decision to join the
military.
The Army needed a new approach. And it engaged Accenture Song to
devise one. The goal? To radically reposition the Army’s
offering, frame a career in the Army in a completely different
way, and motivate a much wider pool of prospective recruits to
apply.
What Accenture did
We devised ‘This is Belonging’, a powerful new brand platform
for the British Army.
Launched in 2017, this long-term campaign—extending across TV,
radio, outdoor, digital, and social channels—set out to show a
different, unexpected, more human side to Army life.
By taking a data-driven approach and blending it with
creativity, the campaign was highly successful in transforming
perceptions and making the Army a place where more young people
could feel they’d belong. The result was year-on-year increases
in applications, with the largest number of recruits for a
decade starting basic training in September 2019.
However, with the interests and aspirations of young people
always evolving, the Army recognized that sustaining this
success would mean being willing to continuously review its
brand relevance and messaging for each new generation.
Our latest campaign iteration was to use the platform to
challenge today’s culture of quick-fix confidence hits and show
how belonging in the Army builds a deeper type of confidence
that lasts a lifetime. This refreshed campaign launched in 2020
with a TV spot that follows a metaphorical journey of a soldier
confronted with distractions from quick confidence hits,
demonstrating an unshakeable confidence that belonging in the
Army gives. A further series of films reveal moments within the
Army which build individuals’ lifelong confidence, and posters
challenge the promises of confidence that surround us in the
modern world. Our PR team worked alongside the core team to
ensure the campaign would pique interest, get media traction,
and reach the widest possible audience, using pre-launch media
briefings to tell an authentic story.
People and culture
By basing its campaign around insights from ethnographic
research, we helped the British Army recognize the changing
nature of its target audience and fundamentally alter its
approach to recruitment.
Our human insight team spent time with both civilians and
serving soldiers to reveal new insights into Gen Z expectations
and aspirations. This work revealed that, while these audiences
were getting superficial confidence boosts from experiences like
fast fashion and social media, they actually wanted more from
their lives. In fact, while nearly all (89 percent) thought
confidence was important to achieving success in life, nearly as
many (80 percent) said lasting confidence was hard to find.
Interviews with serving soldiers, in contrast, showed that
belonging to the British Army could breed a much deeper and
longer-lasting confidence.
These insights formed the basis for the refreshed and highly
targeted 2020 campaign. Digital display delivered tailored
messaging for different audience segments, addressing the
particular barriers and drivers of each segment as candidates
got closer to application.
Another key part of the concept was getting serving soldiers
involved in the campaign. Who better, after all, to explain the
confidence boost the Army can deliver than those living it for
real? So, picking up on the social media campaign, serving
soldiers contributed their own social content, proving that Army
confidence was far more than just a marketing concept.
Confidence that lasts a lifetime
The TV advert followed a soldier’s metaphorical journey to Army
confidence, ignoring superficial confidence fixes in his path.
Value delivered
Just four days after the latest campaign launched in January
2020, the British Army broke its record for the most
applications received in a single day, since the Recruiting
Partnering Project began.
A month later, it had reached 141 percent of its application
target. By March, it had passed its recruitment target for the
recruiting year—the first time it had done so in 8 years. The
campaign launch secured over 300 separate pieces of coverage,
hitting a total earned reach of 1.9 billion.
The long term ‘This is Belonging’ platform has garnered
recognition throughout the industry, winning a prestigious IPA
Gold Effectiveness award and a host of other strategic and
creative awards, including Cannes Lions and the Masters of
Marketing Long Term Brand Building Excellence award in 2020.
But this has been about much more than winning awards or meeting
marketing metrics. Focused on the long term, the ‘This is
Belonging’ platform and its campaign iterations over four years
have tackled longstanding Army stereotypes, transformed the
effectiveness of Army recruitment and inspired a new generation
to find belonging in the British Army.
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