Eleanor Doughty

The millennial poster campaign worked – but the army still has serious problems with recruitment

They say there’s no recruiting sergeant like a war, but in the absence of any fresh conflict, last week the Army launched its new recruitment campaign. A batch of posters dressed up in the style of the Lord Kitchener first world war ads popped up with modern-day phrases such as ‘Snowflakes’, ‘Me me me millennials’, and ‘phone zombies’, in an attempt to lure young people. In a moment of extreme irony, one Scots Guardsman, whose face appeared on one of the posters with the slogan ‘Snowflakes – the Army needs you and your compassion’, has told friends that he would submit his resignation at the earliest possible opportunity, after being mocked about it. Snowflakes, indeed.

Reactions elsewhere have been divisive. One Twitter user suggested that the Army ought to get its facts right, having apparently confused Generation Z (those born from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, whom it is presumably targeting), and Millennials (those born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s, whom are accused of snowflake-like behaviour). ‘If you’re going to try to manipulate people, best make it the right people.’ Meanwhile, former SAS Regimental Sergeant Major James Deegan MC described the campaign as ‘clever’, and territorial army officer and Conservative MP James Cleverly defended the campaign. ‘The army has always recruited from the society it serves and often from those who some described as “not up to the mark”. It then turns those recruits into world class soldiers’. A commanding officer of 18 years service adds that ‘the soldiers that turn up in my regiment today are exactly the same as those I fought with in Iraq, and those who went to Northern Ireland and the Falklands.’

But that anyone is talking about the new campaign at all means that it has worked. Given the constant messaging in today’s world, puncturing the public consciousness is increasingly difficult.

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