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Audio:
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Slides: The Royal Air Force
Transcript:
Speaker: So, I’m going to tell you how we have used social media as a key part of the marketing mix to help the recruitment campaign, which we now recruit about 4,000 people a year into the RAF. [xx] So, we are trying to open up the RAF, and we want to reduce the barriers to entry and increase recruitment. What we want to do, we want to build connections between people who are in the RAF, so that’s the 44,000 people in the RAF, and the people who might want to join. We also really want to open up the RAF so that people have a better understanding of what their life is actually like in the RAF. We, basically, want to reposition it, so, at the moment, it’s all about planes(?) and also it’s perceived as being a boys’ club, an elite boys’ club. We want to show the real RAF, which is more human who wants to be more visible and more practical. So, we’ve done this in two key ways, we’re using storytelling. By storytelling, we’re using these 44,000 people and to tell them the stories, because I think there’s an air of mystery about what the RAF is actually like and what people do what their life is like. The second part is actually sort of monitoring the conversations as much as we can where people asking questions that we can answer. When I say we, I mean RAF, that they answer. I should just get them to join the conversation and answer these questions. We started this activity on YouTube about two or three years ago, and our first activity was the Goody Diaries, and this was SAC Paul Goodfellow. When he’s out in Afghanistan, he recorded some video diaries everyday and then a special one every week. I’m just going to play, it’s is about a minute long, but it just shows how it really kind of crosses the barriers a bit because it shows how human they actually are when they’re working out in Afghanistan. (I think you should just click on that, yes). Man in video clip: As you see, I’ve got [xx] video a day. We’ve got the storm going on out here in Afghanistan. [xx] I’ve never seen [xx] make it. [xx] It really show [xx]. (Men laughing, speaking unintelligibly) Speaker: I just think it’s really a lovely video, and there are a lot like this, but it’s just showing that they’re doing a massive important job out there, but at the same time, they are still normal people. The next slide just shows some of the comments on this YouTube channel. We’ve had thousands of comments and they vary enormously. Some are from their friends and there’s one that says, “That’s my brother in the rain.” There are some from other Armed Forces and there’s kind of rivalry between the forces. (Excuse me).There are some who are anti-war and there’s a massive variety. But what we’ve seen is that for every negative comment that you get a number more of those basically fighting the RAF’s corner, so it’s really an interesting dynamic. We’ve got another strong presence on a Bebo profile as well. We set this up last year when we sponsored one of the Bebo productions and publish it with Endemol called “The Gap Year.” This was great because it really launched the profile really and, basically, since that, we’ve had a strong presence on there. We’ve used it to communicate with the friends on the page and also show videos and generally answer questions from people on the page. A new piece of activity – and all these activities kind of build one on the other so we’re getting a stronger and stronger presence – is this we’re using Flickr and Twitter. So, we’ve recruit seven people on the RAF with mobiles to tell their story using photos and small blog updates, small group blogging. They’re very varied, so we’ve got men, women, officers, non-officers, people who do different [xx] in the RAF, and they are just telling their stories. It’s low key, it’s photos, and blog updates. This is just to show some of the photos they take. Then, the other thing I said we’re doing with this conversation monitoring, so what we’re trying to do is just make sure – because lots of people have questions but they didn’t want to pull the help center to ask because it sounds too trivial. They don’t really know who to ask, so what we’re trying to do is just intervene at that point. So, if people are thinking about joining the RAF and have a question that they want answered, at least three people who have networks and they can fan the conversation and just answer the questions. This brings me to results slide, so this is basically a slide of numbers. I think the numbers are largely meaningless (laughter) in many ways, because what we have on, on the YouTube and the Bebo channels, we’ve got a really strong dialog with the people on that, and we had actually having a conversation. Flickr and Twitter, I think it’s coming, but it’s in its infancy and we really need to kind of persevere with it. But, what we have seen is, on YouTube and on the Bebo channels, we’ve seen people have gone from there and then on to the RAF website, and then they’ve actually gone on to apply. So, we can see that this dialog is really supporting the campaign. Then, the final slide, and what we’ve learned. What we’ve found is that I’m not really interested in the people in the RAF, in the [xx] RAF. We found that some things don’t pick up immediately and they kind of gather momentum. I think it’s really important not to just give up straight away, but actually, to see what they think is going to work and then persevere if you do. This kind of thing requires really careful planning, and we do see that every bit of activity should build on the previous bits of activity. I think social media for the RAF is a long term investment. And then finally, I think, what we’ve found is that we don’t always see to get involved because sometimes, the discussion is going on and we don’t enhance it. So, in some places, like on Facebook, it’s working on [xx] we don’t need to work in it.
Q & A:
Question:
How do you address responsibility to depict the ’seriousness’ of the RAF? Critics suggest YouTube campaign trivialises the military…makes it look all fun.
Answer:
Whilst the RAF is a serious career choice, there’s few other jobs where you can develop such a high level of camaraderie between your fellow airmen/airwomen, so it’s important to show this in our YouTube content. Other videos show a more serious side, whether that be training challenges, or the harder side of life in theatre.The content on YouTube is intended to give users a complete picture of what it’s like to be in the RAF, research has shown this is what they want to see. The videos present RAF personal as they actually are – human beings, and so help to build a relationship between those serving and potential recruits, so they can make a more informed choice.