The millennial poster campaign worked – but the army still has serious problems with recruitment

They say there’s no recruiting sergeant like a war, but in the absence of any fresh conflict, last week the Army launched its new recruitment campaign. A batch of posters dressed up in the style of the Lord Kitchener first world war ads popped up with modern-day phrases such as ‘Snowflakes’, ‘Me me me millennials’, and ‘phone zombies’, in an attempt to lure young people. In a moment of extreme irony, one Scots Guardsman, whose face appeared on one of the posters with the slogan ‘Snowflakes – the Army needs you and your compassion’, has told friends that he would submit his resignation at the earliest possible opportunity, after being mocked about it. Snowflakes, indeed.

Reactions elsewhere have been divisive. One Twitter user suggested that the Army ought to get its facts right, having apparently confused Generation Z (those born from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, whom it is presumably targeting), and Millennials (those born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s, whom are accused of snowflake-like behaviour).