The Australian Navy needed to recruit Electronic Spectrum System Operators. It’s an intelligence role that’s difficult to recruit for – only 1% of Australians have the aptitude for the role. It involves identifying enemy threats by manipulating frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, also known as The Invisible Battlefield. Our challenge was to engage a niche audience with a single organic social post, make them aware of the job role, and increase high quality job applications.

The Audio Ad You Can See is 56 seconds of audio. But hidden inside the audio is a print ad. To find it, the audio data needs to be turned into an image by processing it with a spectrogram. It’s software that technically-minded people use to analyse frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s the same technology the Navy uses to identify threats that can’t be seen. Only those with the right skills and problem-solving abilities could find the hidden message and unlock the job application website. The result was an audio ad that was also a print ad, and a unique tech-led brand experience that activated new job applications.

We needed to target a very niche audience – only 1% of Australians have the aptitude for this intelligence job. Our strategy was to create a guerrilla campaign by releasing an ad on social media only they could see – a print ad hidden in the electromagnetic spectrum. To find it, they needed to analyse the audio with a spectrogram, just like they would if they were an intelligence officer in the Australian Navy. It resulted in high quality candidates registering their interest for a job they previously didn’t know existed.

The Audio Ad You Can See was released as a single Facebook post. By decoding the audio and finding the hidden message, our audience would also find the job application page. Not everyone was able to find the message, but those who did were exactly the niche audience we needed to engage with. To make the game even more challenging, the audio also contained other hidden sounds to misdirect the audience, like sonar pings, whale sounds, muffled communications and Morse code – with its own hidden message that spelled out ‘THIS ISN’T IT KEEP LOOKING’.

This was one of the Navy’s most successful direct recruitment campaigns. On social media, it had more interactions than any other organic post from Australia’s Defence Forces with 512% more impressions, resulting in 80 times more engagement with the job listing, all from high quality candidates. It also helped position the Australian Navy as an innovative and tech-based employer for anyone interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The Audio Ad You Can See gave high quality candidates an experience that went beyond listening to an ad or looking at a poster – it put them in the shoes on an Electronic Spectrum Systems Operator and helped them imagine a career in the Navy.