banterbus,

Just watched it, thought it very good.

Surely the point that YOU don't like it and you don't think it has been well received by those serving that you work with is entirely irrelevant, after all it's a recruitment device, it's designed to entice people in, so those already in are not the target audience.

As for your comment about it putting men off applying, why on earth would any man be put off by it?

Is the recruiting advert in question:


Rather good, in my opinion!

Loved it! Particularly the "punchline" at the end .... "All day protection .... now with wings"

That's the sort of thinking that deserves an MBE or something - more use than many who get one.......

Yes that's the badger. Seriously though, a pun about menstruation as a tagline for recruitment...? Surely we can do better.

Indeed, but if some people who have the right qualities think that the RAF will only let them do "lightweight type jobs" or that the RAF doesn't want them because of their ethnic background, sexuality etc., they won't apply. The RAF is competing with many employers who offer rewarding careers to a diverse range of potential staff; it therefore needs to cast its recruiting net wide and show that it offers opportunities for a wide range of people.

I agree teeters, As I mentioned earlier, the protection with wings line was very clever. If you can do better Training Risky, let's hear your ideas.

You asked for it: RAF PR should be emphasising persistence, that we have been around for a century doing the same thing to the bad guys that we have always done. And for another century after this one. So any advert should be capitalising on our persistence: linking the past with today. You can throw a bit of CGI in to make it stand out and Yes you can have a bit of humanitarian ops in there too, showing its not all about kinetics. To wit:
1. NW frontier era DH.10 pilot using a Garmin to nav in cloud while bombing Afghan insurgents with the tagline "Scaring terrorists from the air the first time around, when we uploaded to the 'cloud'!"
2. Douglas Bader having a smoke before donning a helmet-mounted sight before launching with the tagline "Protecting the UK from the EU before you were born. Nothing we haven't done before!"
3. Skip to a Herc dropping supplies in Sudan in 1984 with a 2019 Michael Buerk saying to camera "We did this before crowdfunding was trendy!"

You get the gist. That's off the top of my head and it would be better than emphasising gender, snowflakes, or that it's ok to cry...
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So many people missing the point of this ad which is "all trades in the RAF are open to both sexes", something which hasn't always been the case . It is a message that the RAF need to get across and I think that the ad does a great job in this respect.

4. Guy Gibson-type doing a walkround on a 'Dave' JSF with a spotty 18 year old SAC metrosexual-type prior to bombing Islamic State (or next best threat) to a Stormzy track, showing synergy between old and young. How's that?!

...and he could shout for his dog!

The question throws up an interesting dilemma regarding military etiquette. Given the apparent sensitivities attached to gender titles, how does one know whether to address a person wearing a skirt and ostensibly female as 'Madam' or 'Ma'am' and a hairy looking bloke obviously male as 'Sir' or, perhaps Madam ?

Sensitive people might take umbrage and allege 'hate crime'. Should we adopt some other form of neutral salutation that takes account of these rather delicate sexual nuances ?

Call everyone 'Mate'?

I've always found "My Lord/Lady", "Excellency" (with or without the chocolates) or "Highness" works well :E

If you are Australian "Boss" or English "Guv" seems to work OK

My experience also. As the Captain of a small warship I preferred a mixed crew. The atmosphere was more pleasant as the women had a civilizing effect on the young men and the men invariably worked harder then they had to because they did not like being shown up by the women.