British Army Ad Campaign With ‘Hallucinating Tom’ Trying to Lure Youth to Serve Makes Netizens Buzz

The British Army’s new recruitment campaign under the call “Find Where You Belong” has prompted mixed reactions online. The advertising video posted on the Army’s Twitter account with the caption “Lots of things can give you confidence… for a little while. But confidence that lasts a lifetime? That's #ArmyConfidence”.

It features a young man in a uniform, crossing a desert and what looks like a representation of a millennial or Zoomer’s dreams and pursuits. It includes a beefed-up trainer who promises top-notch shape, friends inviting for a drink or a night-out, and a representation of fast fashion, an Asian man offering a pair of sneakers – with all of them speaking in dreamy voices – as well as Instagram and mobile alerts.

The dream is cut short by a fellow serviceman and a voice-over promising that one can find confidence for a lifetime only in one place, namely in the British Army. The clip ends with the army’s logo and the motto “Be The Best”, which eerily resembles the name of FLOTUS Melania Trump’s anti-bullying campaign Be Best.

​Some gave the bold clip two thumbs-up.

​Others were less impressed, suggesting that a hallucinating soldier is not a good message.

​As the head of marketing for the campaign team at the British Army’s outsourcer Capita, Nick Terry, explained to The Independent, the generation that they are targeting “is being bombarded with stuff that gives them very short-term or superficial quick hits of confidence whether that’s through chasing likes on Instagram, buying the latest pair of trainers every month, getting your body buffed up for the summer, Love Island-style”. That is why they used these images to appeal to them.

“These are all things that on the surface give quick hits of confidence but actually... there’s something longer-lasting that the army can give”, he explained.

The video ad is supported by posters featuring muscular arms and torsos and saying: "Confidence can be built for a summertime or it can last a lifetime". There are similar collages with glasses, spray tans, clothes, and emojis accompanied by the same message.

As the army's head of recruitment, Col. Nick MacKenzie, told the BBC, they proceeded with this campaign following last year’s success with the “Your Army Needs You” appeal, aiming to recruit “millennials” to join the armed forces. The UK military’s “Snowflakes” advertising campaign, launched last January, boosted applications to join the army by 46 percent, compared to the previous ten years.