The Irish Naval Service has been in existence for almost 70 years, but in recent years, it has had to face what is perhaps its greatest challenge ever – recruitment.
The issue: finding young people to sign up to a rewarding but demanding career of dedication and service. A strong jobs market made the task even greater.
A straightforward answer might have been a campaign that showed the high-octane, exciting and adventurous life at sea that might attract recruits. That was an idea – but not a solution.
From research, we knew that the issue was as much with churn: recruits who, having been trained in the Naval Service, leaving to work in the private sector. That affected morale, and also meant fewer experienced sailors to train in new ones – which in turn affected recruitment, and so on.
To find the solution, we turned to Planning and Strategy. What if we created a campaign that was as much about finding the ‘right’ people in the first place? The Naval Service had told us that for crew, “your ship is your home”. We realised that, hand-in-hand with the excitement and adventure, our campaign had to work on an emotive, thoughtful level.
As a contrast to the isolation and insignificance young people can feel in an increasingly virtual culture, we showed that life in the Naval Service is ‘real’. A career with real values, real meaning, and real belonging.
The result was the campaign ‘SHIP’ – inspired by the fact that when you add the word ‘SHIP’ to words like guardian, mentor, leader, and kin, you complete those words. Simple, yet powerful – and effective.
If you'd like to find out more about this solution and to see the results, get in touch here.