The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has given Defence a big tick for its management of a selection of three advertising campaigns promoting recruiting.
But it doesn’t actually know if they were effective in attracting fresh recruits at a time when Defence is experiencing dire problems in achieving recruiting targets.
In a new report the ANAO found Defence’s management of the three selected campaigns was largely effective.
“Defence complied with most of the review, certification and publication requirements of the campaign advertising framework and largely complied with the requirements of Principles 1 to 4 of the relevant Australian Government Guidelines on Information and Advertising Campaigns,” the ANAO said.
And well it should, as Defence recruiting advertising is an ongoing activity, accounting for more than a third of all Australian Government campaign advertising expenditure in 2022–23, at a cost of just over $60 million.
The three campaigns were titled Take a Closer Look, launched in August 2022, Where It All Begins, launched in February 2023 and Live a Story Worth Telling, launched in March 2023.
But have these these campaigns succeeded in attracting more recruits? Defence doesn’t really know.
“Defence monitors the performance of its active campaigns but does not conduct evaluations to determine their effectiveness, as it is required to do,” ANAO said.
Defence agreed to an ANAO recommendation that it establish clear objectives for each campaign prior to its development, document an evaluation plan and prepare a final evaluation report at the conclusion of each campaign.
“Defence notes that each of its campaigns are subject to rigorous and comprehensive quarterly evaluations over the life of a campaign - a period of typically 4-6 years - to regularly assess the audience's resonance with, recollection of, and reaction to, the subject campaign,” it said.
“Defence accepts the finding that it has not conducted a final evaluation of campaigns it has elected to remove from market.”
Defence’s big problem is that it needs lots more recruits as soon as possible, with a shortfall of around 5,000.
This isn’t just an issue for the ADF - many other nations also experience challenges in attracting recruits. For Australia the fundamental issue is a strong economy as Defence usually does better when jobs are scarce.
Once recruiting was the responsibility of each service but since 2002, it’s been handled by Defence Force Recruiting, a branch within the Defence People Group.
Campaigns are prepared by Defence and commercial ad companies.
Defence uses constant marketing, which means that it has a presence somewhere - such as on social media, in cinemas or on free-to-air TV - all the time.