Publicity?

[scaddie]

Many people talk about the size of the Canadian Army...

I've often wondered why there isn't much publicity attempting to encourage people to join the forces? There is some, and it has gotten better in the past couple years (television, and websites). It seems like I'm the only one in my highschool who is involved with the forces. I feel as if there should be more information out there for young people like myself, about the army.

 

[Marine837M]

Scaddie,

Publicity is poor in this country also..The forces are poorly publicised they are is unrepresented....people just dont want to join...the few "hardcore" I like to call it... know what they want and dont need a poster to show them.I do agree though with the way the world is... Armed Forces should be promoted as a good start in life and an adventure.

Marine837M 

 

[Jarnhamar]

I'm willing to bet the Canadian forces would have three times as many soldiers/ recruits IF our recruiting system was a lot better than what it currently is.

 

[Armymedic]

The economy is doing well, and DND doesn't have a really large portion of the budget for high priced recruiting advertising. CF is currently counting on soft advertising from all the great work we are doing and how we are in the news. 10 yrs ago, a change of rotation anywhere in Canada wouldn't make national news. Heck, many people didn't know we had soldiers getting killed and injured in groups in Bosnia in 93-94.

News coverage is cheaper and supposeably more effective then the Strong, Proud advertising to attract recruits.

 

[pbi]

Let's get our facts straight here: the poster appears to be a Brit so maybe he's talking about the UK not Canada.

First of all, recruiting attraction is doing very well in Canada (especially for the Army): that isn't the problem at all. It's not that we can't attract the people-we can. It's that our system has difficulty processing them (especially due to VERY strict and SLOW medical review process) and our training system is struggling to handle them all. (We don't have enough NCOs and officers available to act as trainers, since so many are constantly deploying for ops or preparing to deploy).As well, we are only funded for so many people. No point in recruitng 100 if you can only pay 50: that's fraud.

Second, we do 1000 times better at publicity than we used to. In fact, "Connecting With Canadians" is one of the stated main efforts of the Army, and "Building Community Footprint" is one of the official roles of the Army Reserve. Take a good objective look around at media coverage we get today: it is far better, far more positive, and there's lots more of it that when I joined in 1974. We are one of the few Armies in the world who regularly allows and encourages soldiers at all ranks (the more junior the better) to talk to the media. The only rules   are: respect OPSEC and "stay in your lane" (talk about what you are an expert on, tell the truth and don't speculate).

In our Brigade we have a very active Community Footprint/Public Information program, amd we generally enjoy very good relations with the media. If we aren't getting in the public eye, that's probably because we aren't trying. But I don't think it's true: at least here in LFWA we get lots of coverage, 90% of it good. Cheers.

(BTW, I'm an Inf soldier with 30 years in, not a PAO!!)