This thread is interesting- me and my old man constantly have discussions over the Canadian Military's ineffective use of advertisement, versus the American military's advertisements which are way more successful. The problem is, the Canadian military is not targetting the appropriate demographic with their ads. They make our military seem like some kind of boy scouts for adults, with their emphasis on 'team work' and 'adventure' and all this crap. I mean that stuff is all well and good, but it does nothing to attract the demographic that they SHOULD be targetting, which is the macho, gung-ho, lets kick some *** types. And I know the military isn't necessarily looking for those types of people, but then that's part of the problem. The regular forces are in a crap state as anyone with even a little bit of knowledge of the forces should know (and if you don't think so, you need to pull yourself out of the little fantasy world of yours), and part of the problem is, that it's just not attracting the RIGHT kind of people.
Look, it's like this- The military isn't a job for just anyone. It's a job for a very specific type of person, and our government unfortunately doesn't appear to understand this concept. They're trying to make it universally appealing, which is WRONG-WRONG-WRONG! It's like trying to make police work appeal to anarchists. Just doesn't work man. See, the American's have it right. The whole "Army of One' campaign was HUGELY successful down there. I forget what the figures were during that ad campaign, but I recall seeing somewhere that the recruitment rate was quite high then, and is still quite high. Because they target exactly the kind of people who WANT to be in the military- the kind of people that want to go out and BE somebody, and stand out, and fight and kick ***. Sure, it's a lot of propoganda half-the-time, but it works!
I get a kick out of the Canadian forces advertisements. They're so...wimpy. Yay, be part of a team! Adventure! Yeah, well, gee wiz Wally, sounds like fun! I mean, the commercials don't need to be flashy or whatever, but for crap sakes, they need to drop the whole 'boy scouts' angle that they're going with. Stop appealing to the boys, and start appealing to the MEN (and rough and tough WOMEN) who would do well with a career in the forces.
(and I just saw the new ads posted above, and that is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. That's what they need to do! Well...that is until some pissant Liberal government regains power and switches them back to the more kid friendly ads)