Showing the human side of Army life

Challenge

The Australian Army needed to shake its outdated image and convince potential recruits it was a modern organisation offering real career development and purpose.

Idea

An integrated campaign that revealed everyday Army life through the authentic stories of nine real people, humanising the experience. It paired traditional storytelling with a cutting‑edge 360° interactive experience to let people explore the reality for themselves.

How it worked

• Captured nine real soldiers' stories, told through authentic first-person narratives that revealed everyday Army life.

• Paired traditional storytelling with a cutting-edge 360° interactive experience, letting recruits explore that reality for themselves.

• Rolled the campaign out across TV, OOH, digital, cinema, social and the interactive 360° experience to drive engagement and applications.

My Role

Lead Art Director, working alongside a Copywriter and a Social Media Director, and reporting into the ECD. I oversaw the design department throughout, and worked closely with the Strategy department to implement the new UX for the website relaunch.

Obstacles

This was the Army's first brand relaunch in over seven years, which meant navigating an unusually wide stakeholder group, spanning Defence, strategy, design and social, to get a single integrated brand and experience over the line.

Craft

The physical scale of the production was significant: a main TVC crew, a dedicated content crew, two photography crews, a drone crew and a 360° crew, shooting across a 10-day production spanning two cities and three Defence Force bases. The largest 360° scene alone involved directing over 30 infantry, moving tanks and sniffer dogs into a single continuous sequence.

Outcome

Repositioned the Army as a modern, career-focused organisation, giving recruits a genuine window into life on the inside. Launch-phase social content reached more than 6.2 million unique Australians, and the campaign featured the first-ever 360° video posted to Twitter in Australia, helping it stand out as a genuinely innovative recruitment platform. The work went on to win the Grand Effie and Gold for Long Term Effects at the 2018 Effie Awards, recognising both its creative impact and long-term effectiveness.