The Irish Defence Forces are a highly skilled force (especially in the peacekeeping arena) but potential recruits don’t know how awesome a career in it is because they don’t get to see them in action. After all, Ireland is a neutral country.

We knew our audience played games, so we teased the launch of “A New Dawn” as a Trojan horse to ambush our audience and get them to consider a career in the army.

Viewers were invited to “Play The Game or Play For Real” on anewdawn.ie.

However on the launch date, players discovered this was no game, this was a real life experience. We created an immersive interactive video of a real military mission seen through the eyes of a real soldier. This was as close as you could get to the army without actually signing up and served as a showcase for the expertise, strength and ability.

Timeline: 1 week teaser stage followed by 3 week campaign.

We created a 20” unbranded trailer for the game launch which received 500,000 views within the first five days on social media and was also played on screens in busy shopping centres around Ireland.

We turned the key visual into posters and game boxes (containing a DVD of the trailer). We took over window displays in gaming stores as well as getting the game boxes onto their shelves. The animated key visual ran on Orb Screens in over 70 locations. Brand Ambassadors hijacked GamerCon (24,000 attendees) and distributed the game boxes. Game boxes were also left on public transport nationwide and sent to radio hosts. We placed life size cardboard cutouts in stores and cinemas where the trailer was screened. We used programmatic social posts to retarget our audience. The campaign was also picked up by RTE News and influencers.

Within just 4 weeks…

We got a record breaking 5,000 applications, marking the end of a 4 year downward trend.

The campaign reached 1 million views in a population of just 4.5 million.

Total conversion rate from game to sign-up was 16% - this is 620% higher than the industry average.

Visitors to the site were heavily engaged, staying for approx. 3 minutes and visiting on average 3 pages.

Visits to the Defence Forces website rose by 88% during the campaign - 61% of visitors were from organic search.

It made national and international news, picked up by RTE, Huffington Post, the Independent, Ad World, The Stable, The Drum and The Sun among others.