11,700 young Irish women are destined for a job in a supermarket, social circumstance having ruled out college and career as viable options.

11,700 amateur team players whose brilliance on the sports field isn’t valued in the real world… who only feel worthwhile when they are training and playing.

They didn’t know that they can get paid for what they are good at – that the Defence Forces need exactly what they have: physical and moral courage, selflessness, loyalty, & respect.

Our idea was to make them realize that there is a job out there that they have been training for all their lives... they just didn’t know it.

Precision targeting of audience and insight was at the heart of the creative solution.

Having found our audience, our work was designed to mirror the viable attributes of the 11,700 young women.

We showed that what they are valued for on their field, pitch, and court is exactly what a career in the Defence Forces is built upon.

And through precision targeting on Facebook (in sports groups and conversations), we turned qualified leads into applicants by enticing them to “Join Our Team.”

Our task for 2016 was to increase the number of female applicants to the Defence Forces, year on year (to help achieve the quota by 2020 (from 6% to 12% female soldiers)).

On finding a ripe audience, we set our ambitions on netting 577 qualified leads – those most likely to apply and succeed.

Assuming the number of male applicants would remain the same as previous years, 577 committed female recruits would meet the 2020 gender quota.

Three weeks in and armed with a media spend of only €750.00 on Facebook, we managed to hit the magic 577 and increase annual applicants by +65%.

With a budget of just €20k, we were fighting extremely long odds of 62,857/1 when tasked with increasing female applicants to the Irish Army.

Women make up only 6% of the Irish Defence Forces, and last year, only 34 applied (of which only 6 turned up to the first day of fitness testing).

We discovered that FIT was the barrier – that the majority assumed they wouldn’t be the right fit, thereby ruling out a career in the Army.

With sniper-like data mining we discovered a qualified minority – those most likely to apply, and most likely to succeed.

Through a national, online poll we established that the vast majority rule themselves out on an assumption that they wont be a good fit!

We needed a smarter approach.

We needed to be as efficient as possible with our budget. And that meant not talking to everyone.

We narrowed the universe from 1.8m to just 11,700 qualified leads (most likely to fit) – young, futureless, active sportswomen who only felt valued on the sports field.

And then we built our creative solution on the key audience insight – “I wish I could be valued in life for what I am valued for on the sports field.”

Tasked with driving female recruitment to the Irish Defence Forces in 2016, we faced five challenges:

1. We only had five weeks (application closing date: 22 May 2016,)

2. Production budget = €20k

3. Media budget = €1k (Facebook only)

4. In 2015, only 350 females applied (demand is low)

5. 282 didn’t show up for the first day’s training.

In short, the Defence Forces had recruited a small number of female applicants in 2015, and the majority were not viable candidates as their feet never touched military soil – they had ruled themselves out.

We had no option but to use data smartly to precision target the right audience.