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The Army is no longer about trudging through mud hunting for the

enemy. Old prejudices and perceptions are being changed with a policy of

recruiting more ethnic minorities and women.

The task of putting that change into marketing action has fallen to Mark

Bainbridge, the Army’s first civilian marketing director.

The Army’s recent high-profile recruitment drive, Operation Kenya,

fronted by boxer Naseem Hamed and EastEastenders’ star Tamzin Outhwaite,

is the latest evidence of how the Army is revamping its marketing

strategy to focus more on PR, promotions and new media.

Bainbridge says: ’We’ve conducted a roots and branch review of our

commercial support. The Army is shifting from broadcast communications

to narrowcast.’ Bainbridge, a former marketing director of Operation

Raleigh, has been moving the Army toward this strategy since he took

over the post from Colonel Rory Clayton last May. Bainbridge has no

formal Army training but goes on manoeuvres every few months to

familiarise himself with conditions.

Bainbridge’s task, backed by a team of regional marketers and an agency

roster headed by Saatchi & Saatchi, is to generate 15,000 enlistments a

year to keep the Army at its current level of 109,000 soldiers. However,

marketing now also involves communicating to the right audiences,

including ethnic minorities and women, about the full range of careers

available in the Army.

The reason for the Army’s shift in marketing strategy is its need to

target these audiences to keep numbers up and to reflect society. It has

faced criticism because women and ethnic minorities are still under

represented.

Just 7.7% of the ranks are women and 3% are from ethnic minorities.

While promotions-linked activity such as Operation Kenya - which offers

winning applicants one week’s training in Kenya with the King’s Regiment

- is working, the Army will not turn its back completely on broadcast

advertising. Television work through Saatchi & Saatchi will run in April

but the Army’s current advertising spend of pounds 6m has fallen from

pounds 10m in previous years.

Bainbridge wants to build on phase one of the Army’s marketing strategy,

which began in 1994 under Clayton and involved advertising using the

phrase, ’Be the Best’. The Army’s most recent television campaigns,

launched last year, featured soldiers being faced with dilemmas on

missions. One, entitled ’Blanket’, presented viewers with the problem of

being on a mountainside during a blizzard and having to decide which

member of the team should get the blanket.

Jeremy Pyne, managing partner at Saatchi & Saatchi, says: ’The type of

advertising we will do will change. We’re moving forward with things to

get people to engage with the Army.’ There will be more direct response

advertising and this will be backed by media which allow for more

information to be passed on to potential recruits.

Saatchi & Saatchi’s role has changed because of this. For instance,

recent PR and promotional activity has targeted women with the message

that 74% of jobs in the Army are open to them. Ethnic minorities have

also been targeted through advertising and PR. The Voice, the well-known

black newspaper, carried in-depth coverage of the Operation Kenya

promotion.

The web strategy continues to underpin targeting strategy, with between

40% and 50% of new recruits coming to the Army via the web

(www.army.mod.co.uk).

Last year its site received 1.3 million hits. The web is an ideal medium

for targeting the main audience of 6.2 million 16- to 24-year-olds.

Bainbridge says marketing activity is also about conveying the idea that

there are 104 different careers and in-depth training available in the

Army, and that recruits are no longer tied-in for 22 years. Bainbridge

says : ’We’re saying that the Army is a dynamic modern youth

organisation that offers diversity.’

Pyne says that the Army is more forward thinking than observers

believe.

’It’s a very special organisation and the product we’re dealing with is

almost like no other. We have to use radical thinking because it is an

organisation with no marketing preconceptions.’