British Army: advert-body-1 by Karmarama

Women currently represent less than a tenth of staff in the British Army (9.8%). The figure is not much improved for the Army Reserves, in which only 14.2% of total personnel identify as women. A new campaign from Karmarama, part of Accenture Interactive, aims to redress that balance by encouraging women to join up.

The campaign, titled ‘A soldier is a soldier’, is rolling out across cinema, VOD, radio and social media. It is the latest in the ‘This is Belonging’ series designed to spotlight how the Army aims to develop people’s skills, regardless of their gender and background.

Nik Studzinski is chief creative officer at Karmarama. He said: “Building on the foundations of our ‘This is Belonging’ campaign, ‘A soldier is a soldier’ further challenges perceptions some people may have of the Army – in this case, gender labeling. We’re proud to work with Capita and the British Army, and driving further progress towards gender equality is something that’s really important to everyone at Karmarama.”

The campaign is primarily aimed at the 23% of all female 14-24-year-olds who are interested in the Army as a career, according to the Army Campaign Evaluation Tracker in September of last year.

The film at the heart of the campaign is narrated by serving female soldiers, and aims to communicate that women serve as vital a role in the Army as their male counterparts. The narrator of the film explains that they “wouldn’t know” what life is like as a woman in the Army, because ”a soldier is a soldier”. It features visuals including a wound held together with stitches that spell out ‘good for a woman’ as the narrator explains that “no-one calls me ‘good for a woman’ when I’m the one stitching them up”.

The message is also communicated across social media in a tie-up with The Lad Bible Group. The Lab Bible Group conducted research that found that 99% of the first 100 images of soldiers on Google were of males. Using these insights, it created content featuring female soldiers sharing stories about their jobs, with the aim of ensuring more women are seen as soldiers in that first tranche of search results.

Siobhan Penrose, head of marketing for the British Army Recruiting Group, said: “We’re proud to be launching a campaign with the Army that directly addresses our attitudes to diversity and inclusion. We hope to build on the success of previous campaigns and ultimately offer all soldiers a chance to reach their full potential through a great career in the British Army.”

Major general Sharon Nesmith, general officer commanding Army recruiting and initial training command, said: “We hope that ‘A solider is a soldier’ challenges people’s perceptions of female soldiers and highlights the incredible work all of our soldiers do, in order to inspire potential new recruits to consider Army jobs.”