Start Thinking Soldier

The overall brief was to increase recruitment amongst 16-24 year olds — especially groups who might not ordinarily consider joining the army — by creating a rich interactive experience at the heart of an integrated campaign running across multiple media channels.

Skive were appointed by Publicis Modem and the COI to develop a series of engaging digital missions that seamlessly expanded upon four television ads and put the user in the boots of a variety of realistic soldiering and training scenarios, comparable to the sorts of digital gaming experiences the target market would be familiar with.

Using a variety of technologies such as Unity and Alternativa 3D, Skive produced no less than 16 interactive challenges across different themes of Leadership, Decision Making, Teamwork and Stamina — which are the leading attributes that the Army look for in their recruits, each promoting a variety of different job roles.

Production involved close collaboration not only with Publicis Modem and the COI but Spank, the company making the TV ads who also shot over half an hour of bespoke video content that bridged the interactive missions, and Skive were involved in scripting, V/O recording and sound engineering.

An ‘achievement’ system was devised to drive registration along with bonus content, and featured job roles, Army kit and weaponry.

Since launch, the online campaign has attracted an amazing 604,038 site visitors, 52,336 registrations and an amazing average dwell time of 9-10minutes. The stickiness of the site has meant the bounce rate is phenomenally low at 1.6%.