Royal Navy
Recruiting a new generation to one of the world's oldest organisations.
For 5 years I led the creative across all digital channels for the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Building a recognisable brand across the web and social to attract and recruit thousands of new personnel each year.
Creative Director – Great State
Websites | Social | Campaigns | Products | Strategy
Background
Every year, the Royal Navy needs an incredible 25,000 new applicants to maintain operational levels. They needed to find their appeal and compete in the face of growing competition from civilian jobs – often offering more flexible, lucrative careers. The vast demographic of 16-35-year-old recruits are more than an age bracket; they’re from every walk of life - each with their motives, interests and background. Our role was to create the end-to-end recruitment experience; attracting, supporting and converting each new cohort across their digital platforms.
Approach
We oversaw their entire digital ecosystem, integrating journeys across their social channels and websites. With over 100 roles available; from Commandos to Chefs, Dentists to Nuclear Engineers – no naval career is the same. What appeals to inner-city school-leavers is very different to masters-level graduates.
Understanding their motivations, the potential pitfalls through application and the cultural perceptions of the Navy were key, so we interviewed hundreds of personnel to better understand their journey into the Navy.
An ongoing, always-on stream of targetted campaigns adapted our message to different audiences; painting a picture of the Navy that would appeal to and resonate with them on a personal level.
We also ran dozens of highly successful hero campaigns across channels to drive recruitment of under-represented demographics and fill under-applied roles.
Submariner recruitment campaign casestudy
We restructured, rebuilt and redesigned the entire recruitment website, reimagining content and videos to help support decisions and training, and developed tools to aid role-finding. Creating a vast, connected recruitment ecosystem across all channels.
Support video played to new recruits on their first day of training.
One of many Role Videos to help potential recruits chose a role to apply for.
In the past 5 years, our reimagining of digital recruitment has seen application conversion increase on-site by 3% year on year; a 25% increase in visits to the site (now at over 9 million visits per year); and our social audiences have more than tripled in size. The careers redesign was voted in the top three careers websites by the Times Top 100 Graduate recruitment awards. And our campaigns have picked up scores of awards.
