This!
I'm old enough to remember getting the news from Walter Cronkite. I've watched the media change over the years albeit slowly at the start and then becoming a gallop in the last two decades as internet took hold and rather than choosing your information from between three or four talking heads and two newspapers the choice exploded into hundreds of thousands of feeds.
The problem is that out of that mass of information the public chooses what's most gratifying to it, what offers the most confirmation bias and what is the most entertaining. Mostly that reaches out to the lowest common denominator of critical thought.
DND and the Army do have media channels that provide valuable information - the Army's website, Army Today, the Canadian Army Journal, and, until recently, the Canadian Military Journal, Canadian Defence Review, The Maple Leaf. There are hundreds of other websites that provide valuable defence information that, while not specific to Canada, is relevant to Canada. How much or how little one uses those sites is the question.
Frankly, I only follow a few sites, not because I'm old, but because they are all too often Johnny One Note affairs that basically offer the same message over and over again cleverly hidden amongst non-informative entertainment. (How many times have I turned out one more lengthy post on reserve restructuring on this site? - at least I don't put in images of scantily clad PA sergeants making pouty faces)
I'll readily agree with the fact that the traditional media sources (such as the Canadian Army Journal) do not reach the vast majority of those who should read it. I sometimes miss the old "Sentinel" that showed up every month in break rooms across the country and were pretty dogeared by the time the next issue came out. Pretty much everyone in the CAF saw and read the messaging of the month. Not so today. It's hard to find the message, if there is one.
I'll give you this: it's hard for the PA world to reach its target audience amongst a public (civilian and military) fleeting attention span that generally rejects "information" for "entertainment." While Hailey may have 350,000 followers, her message is "i am in the Armie and i like to play and laugh and have fun. i am normal." Beyond finding a few recruits who think that they'll be able to hook up in the "armie," what does this site accomplish?
Sometimes the problem is that there is entirely too much chaff flying around to even find what the message is. Throwing your message into the wind might make you feel like you are accomplishing something but unless you can point to measurable results that prove you are having an impact, you're just creating an insignificant activity. Walter - he had an impact.
And then there's the self-inflicted wounds, that go viral in places like gigantic magazines with millions of subscribers, which should drive the CAF to managing their public image better or else the consequences might be enormous - but probably won't.
Congrats, we are an international media laughing stock
The Canadian Army’s new camouflage moose logo comes amid recruiting problems
It’s supposed to look like a new camo pattern, but one lawmaker said it looks like a bad game of Tetris.
Canada’s Army introduced a secondary logo that has people asking “How much did you pay for this?”
The logo is a detail from the Canadian Army’s new “Canadian disruptive pattern multi-terrain camouflage” in brown with a brown Canadian maple leaf. Online, people said it looked like a Lego moose or something from the video game
Minecraft after the Canadian Army’s X account asked followers
what they thought.
“I think it looks like the Army is saying it doesn’t know how to play Tetris,” wrote
Goldie Chamari, a member of Ontario’s legislature.
In response to the blowback, the Canadian Army reassured followers it wasn’t dumping its longtime official logo, which shows three maple leaves connected at the stem in front of crossed swords under a royal crown.
“The Canadian Army has not changed its official logo,” the agency wrote on X. The icon launched today is a supplementary design only that will be used in the bottom left corner of certain communications products and in animations for videos.”
The new mark, along with the camouflage pattern and the tagline “Strong. Proud. Ready.” (or “Forts. Fiers. Prêts.” for our friends in Quebec) comes as the Canadian Army faces what Bill Blair, the country’s defense minister, described as a recruiting “death spiral.”
“Over the past three years, more people have left than have entered,” Blair told a
conference in March. “We cannot afford to continue at that pace. We’ve got to do something differently.”
Something different includes a brand refresh. As in the U.S., Canadian military branches use heraldic-style marks for their armed forces. While these symbols are imbued with heritage and tradition—and as misunderstandings about the supplementary Canadian Army mark show, getting rid of them would
not go over well—designers find that speaking to a new generation requires branding that looks more
Call of Duty than coat of arms.
In the U.S., which is facing its own military recruitment struggles, military branches have introduced more contemporary secondary logos to complement their old-school official emblems.
The Army, for example, uses a
seal showing an eagle holding arrows and olive branches in its talons, but it also has a contemporary star logo and wordmark that spells out “U.S. Army” in a custom sans-serif font. The brand was
refreshed last year for a new “Be All You Can Be” recruiting campaign that Major General Alex Fink, chief of Army enterprise marketing, said was designed to reach young people.
“We know youth seek purpose, passion, community, and connection, but we also know many don’t recognize the Army’s ability to deliver on those needs,” Fink said in a statement. “We need a brand that effectively communicates the possibilities of Army service.”
The initial response to the Canadian Army’s secondary logo suggests it might not be as effective as that of its neighbors to the south, but according to Alex Tétreault, Department of National Defense senior communications adviser, at least the new mark didn’t come at the Canadian taxpayers’ expense.
“The icon was developed without additional funds or involvement of external companies,” Tétreault told Canada’s public broadcaster
CBC. “It was developed by DND’s internal graphic design team, and this icon comes at zero expense to the taxpayer.”
www.emarketer.com
