Scrolling Eye
Passchendaele on parade
BY Marc Weisblott September 03, 2008 22:09
The opening night party for the Toronto International Film Festival will star a mini-platoon of Canadian soldiers, marching into the Liberty Grand in commemoration of Paul Gross’ $21 million First World War epic Passchendaele — along with soldiers who played extras in the film making the scene prior to hauling off to Afghanistan. Who needs to bother with the subsequent eight-day parade of paparazzi-ready celebutard sighting when you’ve got that degree of life-or-death gravitas?
Those very same Canadian National Exhibition grounds where the Passchendaele hoopla will be held just finished hosting what looked like the most popular midway attraction during a Sunday afternoon visit last month: a third annual interactive Forces display featuring a fleet of military equipment — and recruitment officers ready to sign up all comers. These outreach efforts no doubt led retired general Rick Hillier taking a new marketing job with TD Canada Trust.
Hiller’s efforts to make the Canadian Forces less of a punchline amidst operations in Kandahar — now at 96 soldier lives lost — got noticed this summer by The Economist. The satellite Tim Hortons location and a recruiting booth at the Toronto Pride Parade — where soldiers also marched in uniform for the first time — were cited as notable developments in Canadian military history.
Paul Gross has expressed diplomatic support of Canada’s role in the Afghan war during his promotion of Passchendaele — while hesitating to draw parallels between the current mission and the story of the Forces losing 5,000 soldiers on the 1917 battlefield at Ypres, Belgium — but can he win the fight to have it seen?
Jason Anderson’s review for EYE WEEKLY notes the “hokey melodrama, homily-ridden dialogue and glossy, tourism-ad shots of Albertan scenery” along with an “ill-judged romantic scene” that actually involves “lighting lovers with mortar fire.”
Presumably, the audience is a different one from the Forces campaign targeted at “action focused males” between 17 and 22 years of age through the purchase of war gaming-related search-engine keywords leading to an invitation to “Fight.”
While pacifist alarms rang in response, public affairs officer Lt. Rob Bungay notes that the above television portion of this campaign — designed to help increase the Forces by 13,000 regular and 10,000 reserve personnel — “elicited a higher proportion of public recall than any other single medium” in a public opinion survey conducted earlier this year through the Environics Research Group.
Bungay reports that the “risk and excitement” images clicked best with 18-to-24-year-old males; 25-to-34s were drawn to the “humanitarian and helping” themes.
The overall forecasted production costs in reaching this recruitment goal in 2008-09 are $2.8 million, with media placement costs forecasted at around $13 million.
How effective has it been so far? They report reaching 98 per cent of their goal of regular recruitment in 2007-08, and 89 per cent for reserves. Television and internet advertising is estimated to play a significant role.
What the Canadian Forces won’t supply is someone to have a conversation about these topics — just procuring the above factoids took about two weeks.
So, forget about getting an official perspective on how press for Passchendaele may or may not influence recruitment efforts, even though the Forces seem to be rooting for the WWI historical fiction cultivated by the movie’s army-brat auteur.
This week, the US Army opened their latest marketing gambit: the Army Experience Center in the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia. The space features vehicle simulators for the Apache helicopter, Black Hawk helicopter and Humvee, plus opportunities to play their officially licensed videogame, America’s Army.
But don’t look for the Canadian Forces to draw direct inspiration from the tactics of other countries: “We do not compare our marketing and advertising efforts to theirs,” writes Lt. Bungay, “as they may have different mandates and objectives.”
The goofiest press the US Army received this year for their forward operating bases in Kuwait and Afghanistan came with the discovery of an advert seeking a Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band with a repertoire spanning “southern rock, pop rock, post-grunge and hard rock” while refraining from displays of “profanity, vulgarity, or connotations of sexual depravity and perversion.”
For their part, the fatigue-wearing band featured onstage at the Canadian Forces display at the Ex stuck to classic-rock covers, along the lines of “Born to be Wild.”
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1