The Navy is always seeking new recruits to fill technology-based roles. When it came to recruiting drone pilots, the campaign needed to stand out from other military recruitment messages. So, we focused on what makes drone pilots different from every other role in the Navy – their perspective of the ocean. Unlike every other job in the Navy, drone pilots see the ocean from above.

These posters bent reality to demonstrate how drone pilots see what their shipmates can’t. They extend the combat radius of the ship and can identify surface contacts – like drug smugglers and pirate vessels – in advance. To exaggerate this unique perspective, we seamlessly merged the view from a ship with the view of a drone pilot to create a surreal image.

The surreal images were created by combining over 100 images with photo-realistic CGI elements. Painstaking attention to detail was applied to every pixel, from the way the rocky outcrop seamlessly bends in way that defies nature, to how a flock of seagulls seem to change their direction of flight. The drone scope elements were crafted based on real Navy drone technology used in missions.

Traffic to the job page increased by 80% in comparison to the same period the year prior. The posters demonstrated to potential new recruits that the Navy is more than looking at the horizon from a ship. By demonstrating how being a Drone Pilot is a different job to any other, the posters met the objectives of the brief.