Case study: The Swedish Army’s Machine wants you
By Simon Fuller. Bunker mentality. Forget dodgy online multiple-choice quizzes. The Försvarsmakten – the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) to you – have The Machine, a psychological personality test site that challenges the nation’s youth to see if they’ve got what it takes for the military life.
Designed by ad agency DDB Stockholm and digital outfit North Kingdom, the online destination – set in what looks like a dark, underground bunker – features a raft of challenges and is backed up by eight different video spots, some of which are very short in length, designed as they are to pull eyeballs to the test.
It’s not the first time the SAF has kept prospective recruits on their toes – since coming up with the Do You Have What It Takes? slogan in 2005, DDB Stockholm has been rolling out recruitment tests, with candidates being appraised first on intelligence and then their ‘motoric’ capabilities. This year’s psychological focus is just the latest stage of the campaign.
“For over a year we have discussed the matter of testing personality since this is the most important parameter for… recruitment in terms of getting the right [candidates],” says Thomas Brenemark, business director at DDB Stockholm. “The value is in [the] glimpse of ‘how good am I at solving things and [does] my personality help me or not?’, and ‘what kind of test challenges can I expect to meet if I try [this] for real?’.”
One big challenge was to make sure the recruitment site was enticing enough to attract visitors, while not skirting around the serious matter to hand.
“The issue to solve was how to make it [appealing], since it could end up extremely dull and non-engaging,” explains Brenemark. “We wanted to incorporate the seriousness but avoid getting boring [and] pretentious. We also [needed] to give [the site] a feel of value.”
The solution was to have the campaign based around the theme of challenge. “The target group is young men and women (aged 19 to 26) and we want them to rethink and evaluate the SAF as an alternative for them,” says Brenemark. “It’s always hard to resist a challenge for anyone, and [especially] for the ones we are looking for in particular.
“The [campaign] involves… entertainment but we want to call it involvement, not entertainment,” says Brenemark. “It is really important to not make it [feel like] play – we need to incorporate… seriousness. What we ask for is not for the target group to try out a new chocolate or new shoe design. It is to enroll and do a serious and important task, maybe even put their life at risk. We need to be straight forward with what we are asking, not shadow package it.”
