Snowflakes, your country needs you
The British Army has recently unveiled its latest recruitment advertisements targeting the ‘millennial’ generation.
The advertisements which have just been released follows the same imagery as the iconic Lord Kitchener poster campaign of the First World War but rather than the poster calling on Britons it is now calling for ‘snowflakes’, ‘phone zombies’ and ‘me, me, millennials’ to join the Army.
The Army has tried to add a positive spin to the negative names, with the adverts stating that with ‘snowflakes’ they see an individual who will show compassion to those around them and with the ‘phone zombies’ they see someone who is focused and can get the job done.
With recent figures showing that despite awarding a £495 million recruitment contract to Capita in 2012, the Army is currently 6,000 personnel short of its target of just over 82,000 members as well as the statistic that 47% of Army applicants voluntarily dropped out of the recruitment process between 2017 and 2018. The Army will be hoping that these new advertisements will turn around what is currently a failing recruitment drive.
The campaign has received a mixed response with some stating that the messages being displayed do not speak to the young audience that it is trying to attract and some even saying that the adverts are “patronising„ and that the “army are out of touch„.
The Army clearly needs to attract and speak out to the ‘millennial’ generation and break down the traditional stereotypes of who a solider might be and highlight the attributes that make a great soldier. I think the TV campaign is great but I’m not convinced by the “snowflake„ adverts.
