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The Wethey Forecast

Get Tim Martin to do the Army recruitment ads

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Another bumper weekend for crazy stories from adland and marketingville. Who’s Tim Martin? He’s the breathtakingly cool Chairman of JD Wetherspoon. And they are the pub chain who are turfing out punters after two drinks if they have brought children with them. It’s a really interesting attempt at social engineering, and somewhat at odds with the customer-service ethic. “We don’t want children there bored while adults drink”, a spokesman explained. A man so dedicated to telling it as it is (why on earth should a Wetherspoon patron think they are entitled to stay for more than a couple of Becks?) would be the perfect choice to develop a much more realistic campaign for the Army. What’s Army recruitment advertising? Those are the ads, according to researcher David Gee (as financed by the Joseph Rowntree Trust) which omit reference to a distinct possibility of strict discipline, injury, death and having to kill the enemy. With recruitment and retention not going awfully well what with Iraq, Afghanistan etc, a more realistic slant to the ads should do the trick, and empty the recruiting centres completely. And we know what Mr Gee says makes sense, because it’s well known that young men are totally non-violent, don’t buy video games and never read about war in the media. There does come a moment when we need to defend both our business and common sense.

Published Jan 07 2008, 09:35 AM by David Wethey

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Comments

by gotnoteef

January 7, 2008 12:47 PM

I have one question about this research: Who joins the miltary without realising that they are entering a career where discipline is a key to success; where injury and death are somewhat inconvenient potential side-effects; and where killing the currently identified nasties is pretty much a given. This research is another example of the nanny state gone mad - if the young lads (and ladies) joining up aren't wise enough to realise what they are gettign themselves in to, how did they summon the nouse to get themselves down to the recruitment office. FFS - this is the army - they are recruiting soldiers - it's no picnic and some of them will die - granted there may be scant justification for it, but it is a simple fact. However, this fact does not need to be the central tenet of their recruitment advertising. What next? Will there be research that concludes potential trainee teachers should be warned in recruitment ads that they are considering a career where there is a strong possibility of them being abused and undermined by smart-Rs kids? Perhaps dustmen should be warned that they may get dirty hands and smell a bit frousty - or maybe marketers should be told that they stand a fair chance of being blamed for everything that is wrong about this world!

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