Recently I've noticed that there have been a lot of army recruitment posters at bus stops. Usually, the posters show one or more infantrymen in camouflage, holding their rifles and standing in vegetation with serious expressions on their faces. Those of you who are Singaporean will know what I am talking about. It's usually something along these lines.
Usually, it's accompanied by a lot of rhetorical crap about how cool being a soldier is, but that's not my point. My point is that pictures like these paint a wholly unrealistic picture of modern warfare. Let's face it, infantrymen no longer play a really pivotal role during war these days. There are only two circumstances in which infantry get sent out. The first is when your artillery, planes, ships and tanks have blown the shit out of the other country's armed forces. Then, infantry gets sent in to finish off the groaning survivors and also to pick the pockets of the dead.
Another circumstance in which infantry actually needs to be deployed is when the other country's artillery, planes, etc, has blown the shit out of your country's equipment. If I were an infantryman and I was being deployed without having been told that we've won, my knee-jerk response would definitely be "fucking what?" Seriously, no matter how good your infantry is and how hard they train, if your machines suck, you lose. And that's the fucking truth. So basically, if you've seen those posters and think that being an infantryman is all glam and shit, you're sadly deluded. Anyone who has a brain would know that signing on as an infantryman is the worst possible career choice of all.
Mistake me not. It's not that I'm not patriotic (although I'm not), and it's not that I do not respect soldiers. I respect soldiers just as much as I respect everyone else (read: not at all). It's that if you're going to ask people to sign on to potentially die for your cause, the least you could do is not insult their intelligence. Therefore, as a civil service, I have taken the time and the trouble to come up with a template for a realistic recruitment poster for the army.
Now, that's a far more attractive poster, wouldn't you say?
6 comments:
i interviewed the guys behind the whole Army ad campaign before. basically, the aims of the ads are (in order f importance:
1) to keep citizens' morale high and to tell (urm, perhaps delude) them that Singapore is well protected, no worries
2) to keep soldiers' morale up
3) to recruit people to join.
Like I've said before, if SAF adverts featured good-looking hunks in their uniforms with hot, skinpily-dressed babes draped all over them instead of the current posters featuring the guys with mud, dirt, camouflage paint and sweat all over them, I think it would do wonders for SAF's recruitment drive. It's the same principle as how they always feature hot babes at motor shows and in car adverts. Guys will be attracted to buy/do whatever the babe is endorsing. Advertising psychology at its best.
Dang, earlier spelling mistake. I meant "skimpily-dressed".
oh kureshii u know what, remember how the poster says, "its not what u leave behind, its what u gain in the days ahead." we used to say since the picture shows the gf the slogan should say, " its not about the gf u leave behind, its the bf u'll get to know inside." hehe.
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