RAF TV Advert
 

First, I dont mean this to be anyway offensive to the RAF PR people, merely "constructive criticism" as my instructors used to say. But does anyone else feel that the RAF's TV adverts have completely lost touch, and in no way compare to the Army and Navy's.

This, coupled with the Air Forces new clothing line, really make me wonder.

I understand that trying to sell the Air Force way of life in a 45 second commercial is difficult to say the least, but surely they can think of something better than a Eurofighter flying over a forest shaped as cutlery?

Comments?

A small lake shaped like cutlery? :confused:

It must be an interesting conundrum for the PR bods these days - how to include the latest shiny, pointy, single-seat wonderjet in the ads (because that's what the Defence budget was spent on) while not disenfranchising the other 75% of the RAF. That would be the percentage who fly, support, task, and generally operate the rest of the fleet that you can't even sign up to fly until you've been told you can't fly the wonderjet! This is the same fleet that hourly, daily, weekly and monthly ad nauseum provides the critical and strategic air support to operations worldwide, not just the CNN headline places.
The truth is that in today's conflicts it is the very unglamorous side of the RAF that wins the respect and admiration of others, and that is a very hard sell in the 20 second attention span world in which we all live, hence the wonderjet pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Welj6nWY4

They should have just used this tbh! (Replacing the USAF+AAC clips with more RAF obviously!)

Very good video, now which 45 sec you going to use.:)

The other thing I guess is the advert needs to sell the future for by the time the pilots get in things will be different again :(?

That reminds me, how did "Spirit of Adventure" go? Last weekend wasn't it? :hmm:

The advertising worked well then!! :ugh:
It hasn't happened yet. It is next weekend, ie Bank Holiday

Dunno about the dross that the RAF put out but if you took 45 seconds of that you tube clip showing SH and mixed it with some of that ridiculously good low level stuff then I'd sign up again.......

Too true. Having said that, not all ad's for the RAF have to be punchy low level stuff. I quite liked the one with the guy getting over the wall ("only you can push yourself as far as you can go") or something like that.

Was actually alright, and a world better than the crap one of the supermarket checkout guy...

That aside, the sure way to recruit is simply to put lots of good footage of all the guys doing the biz to a decent soundtrack! Would work on me!

One of the best adverts i saw was a "Their Country Needs You" one set in a Bosnia type theatre, not sure if it was ever aired though or just one i saw at a presentation.

I think, a couple of years ago or more, there were two fantastic adverts produced for the RAF. IIRC, the were based around events in Bosnia or maybe famine relief ops somewhere. From what I heard, they were deemed to be too hard-hitting for peoples' sensitivities at the time and therefore weren't aired.

Spam, pretty sure I saw one like that on tv in the late 90s? Herc dropping supplies from low level, wokka rescuing people, all rainy and generally muddy? Good ad. Need more like that....

ps the new ad is here:
http://www.raf.mod.uk/downloads/misc...sdownloads.cfm

Why don't the show a bunch of disenchanted blokes sitting about in a dusty tent in body armour waiting for the all clear after another rocket attack? the u tube video is full of none RAF kit, when did we buy apache's? the jags doing the beat up weren't british and we don't have any surface to surface missiles in our inventory!

If everybody in the tent had body armour they wouldn't be British! We don't have enough to go round!

Believe it or not the 'bosnia' type advert with the herc, harrier and wokka was withdrawn. The reason? The advert left the impression that we were too busy getting involved with other countries problems and not sorting our own out first. It's still used on some recruiting drives but will never be shown on TV.

Afg and Iraq?

A good friend of mine recently bought me a packet of RAF Trading cards as a little comedy "saw these and thought of you" type gift. Aimed at the kids I suppose - cards with lots of RAF facts and figures plus a metal tag with different Roundel designs and punchy pictures in each pack.

By all accounts they are actually proving reasonably popular with the target audience.

(I'd quite like Card no 12 if anyone has one to swap...)

This video appeared on the RAF website about a week ago -

http://www.raf.mod.uk/raftoday.cfm

It would make a much better advert.

MLT

I think I will have to crate that poor JT on the top deck of the wellychopter, he looks awfully familiar.......

Either that or they've cloned him to fill the manning shortfall

Apart from an excess of plank-winged fag-chariots, thats a pretty awesome video!