The army has launched a new recruitment drive and no one is happy

The army is starting 2019 with a recruitment drive. A series of images based on the classic World War 1 poster calls on “millennials”, “snowflakes”, “phone zombies”, “binge gamers” and “selfie addicts” to enlist.

But it seems no one is impressed.

Insulting people

Many social media users pointed out that insulting people isn’t really the best tactic to deploy when trying to get them to work for you:

Not sure why the British Army thinks insulting young people is a good recruitment tactic. What an awful campaign. pic.twitter.com/5DjI4GHVPq

— Sarah Hayward (@Sarah_Hayward) January 3, 2019

One Twitter post derided the campaign as “stereotyping and patronising”:

https://twitter.com/Nick_BLM/status/1080799634988113920

Another social media post summed up the general reaction:

https://twitter.com/Aman_Sez/status/1080776817781497856

The reality of war

Meanwhile, other Twitter users pointed out the reality of joining the army:

https://twitter.com/LeeRoss_/status/1080784299790614528

Another person highlighted the “chilling” underlying message of the posters:

One who does not know how chilling it is for any army to reuse the style of its recruitment posters from the First World War! They might as well put on the bottom: 'come in your millions to be sacrificed because we can think of no strategy except wasting the lives of oiks'.

— Alexander Rooksmoor (@ARCRooksmoor) January 3, 2019

This campaign comes amid more and more people protesting militarism. Writing in Left Foot Forward, Symon Hill from the Peace Pledge Union celebrated record numbers of people taking action in 2018. This included record sales of white poppies and that “Armed Forces Day events were met with protests in more places than at any time since the Day was introduced in 2009”.

Hill also issued a timely reminder about army recruitment:

Militarism is a class issue, with the army targeting the poorest and most disadvantaged young people for recruitment.

 

No one is happy

But the campaign didn’t just miss the mark with millennials. Even those supportive of the army weren’t happy:

https://twitter.com/stew3145/status/1080794410315599872

https://twitter.com/AdamMaclellan1/status/1080793180340215808

And it was further pointed out how strange the recruitment drive is given the number of cuts the army has been forced to make in recent years:

This new push for British Army recruitment is socially fascinating: they've cut troop numbers to a massive degree, and have far more people trying to join (recession always helps) than they need- they just don't want most of them. …

— Erwotin Reotar (@eoinmonkey) January 3, 2019

The army is trying to show it is looking beyond usual stereotypes in its recruitment. It appears to have failed with this disastrous marketing campaign. But perhaps this is a good thing. Because usually military recruitment, as Hill points out, preys on poor and disadvantaged people, promising adventure and escape rather than killing, out-of-date equipment and lack of care for veterans.

So the fewer people fooled by military propaganda, the better.

Featured image via Flickr/U.S. Army Europe and Wikimedia