Objective:

Increase the number of officer applicants, which are teenagers choosing to be an Air Force Pilot once they finish school. The Air Force was facing a pilot shortage in the future and needed to recruit, train and deploy pilots starting now.

Approach:

There’s a simple truth about being a kid – at some point, you want to be a pilot. There’s a simpler truth about being a teenager – you think you’re too cool.

Leveraging these two insights, we built a multi-phase plan that would make the office life, especially that of a fighter pilot, come alive in a language the teenagers would understand.

Phase 1- On the spot physical challenges and large-scale air combat video game contests at malls and teenager frequented areas.

Phase 2 – Winners of the above contest (a 100 from across India) would be flown to a ‘secret’ air force base to undergo further training. Which essentially means they will be exposed to the good side and the serious side of the Air Force Life.

Teenagers will experience flight simulators which are bigger and better than any video game console they could lay their hands on. They will also see the good officer life of gala balls, massive infrastructure, perks and other benefits that come with the uniform. They will also learn about respect.

During their stay at the ‘secret’ base, their journey will be live-tweeted/blogged with pictures and videos and other forms of social media updates to generate interest in this activity. These updates will be posted on a microsite which is also a recruitment portal.

Result:

We won the pitch on this idea. Though the idea wasn’t implemented on the scale it was presented, we did manage to do other smaller campaigns using traditional media, leveraging the same insights.