Do you have what it takes?

Background

In the last few years, the Swedish Armed Forces have moved from mandatory enlistment to voluntary recruitment. This means they now have to be seen as an interesting and attractive employer.

Previous campaigns under the ‘Do you have what it takes?’ umbrella challenged applicants with individual IQ and personality tests. This latest campaign challenged their ability to work in teams.

It was intended to drive applications and to help change perceptions of the brand, from being old fashioned to a modern employer relevant to the most talented young men and women in the country.

Idea

Earlier campaigns had shown that the core target audience can’t resist a challenge so the idea was to test their ability to work in groups, because that’s how they would have to work in the armed forces, as part of a team.

Direct mail set the campaign rolling with 7,500 packs mailed out, each containing a single numbered celluloid frame from a film.

Recipients were directed to a website. Here they were given a riddle to solve. But clues would only be made available once they entered their number, thus adding their one frame to help assemble a 7,500 frame-long film. If all 7,500 recipients entered their numbers, then the film would be viewable in its entirety.

It was put together in such a way that the clues to the puzzle could be found once about 50% of the film was assembled.

A TVC, banners and print ads also led to this site. Here it was impossible to solve the tasks alone. You needed three others so a team of four was randomly formed.

Every player discovered that the key to success was the competence of the team working as one, the core message the SAF wanted to communicate.

Results

In the first two weeks of the campaign there were over 100,000 tests completed, each with four people taking part.

Facebook groups sprang up in which skilful individuals could find each other and form teams to get chart-topping results.

To date there have been 1.6 million tests if you count both the Swedish and the English site. It looks as if there have been just over 1 million unique visitors to the site.

The mailing alone generated a 40% response rate with 1,400 completed applications. More importantly, there was a higher ratio of superior-quality candidates and the SAF classified more than 75% of applicants as ‘attractive’, an increase on previous years.

Our Thoughts

Getting people to upload their individual frames to help make a finished film with each other is a simply brilliant idea which makes the Armed Forces seem relevant and modern.

The big challenge facing any website developer is what to do to get people to come back a second or even a third time. The answer here is to turn them into participants. They return to see how ‘their’ film is coming along. On top of that are the tests. I’m afraid I would not be classified as ‘attractive’ by the Swedish army, having helped my team to ‘below average’ scores every time.

As John Griffiths of Planning Above and Beyond has noted elsewhere, this campaign is “an elegant demonstration of the truth that when you communicate intelligently you create a respectful and engaged response.’