Despite Multi-Million Dollar Recruitment Drives, NZ Military Struggling To Bolster Numbers
The NZR digs into the NZDF's recruitment figures and recruitment price tag of over $26 million and asks whether it is has been money well spent or could go elsewhere in the NZDF.
New Zealand Defence Force figures show that all three arms of the military are struggling to meet recruitment targets despite a surge in applicant numbers and spending more than $26 million on outsourcing.
Source: Clemenger BBDO
For the NZ Army, last year just under 10% of applicants were recruited. And between 2018 and 2022 the percentage ranged between 9.98% and 12.70%. For the Airforce, the recruitment percentages ranged between 7.53% and 9.43% from 2018 to 2023.
[The NZDF noted that “The number of applications by year, and the number of attestations, are not correlating sets of data. This is because an applicant may take many months before they appear for and complete training and then attest, this will often cross over calendar years.” Therefore, please treat all percentages and comparisons contained in this article as an inexact indicator of the NZDF’s progress.]
The NZDF has paid Australasian marketing company Clemenger BBDO more than $26 million between 2018 and 2023 to conduct recruitment drives. This year, Clemenger BBDO Australia has been nominated across three categories in the 2024 Award creative awards for work done with Bowl Cancer Australia, the Department of Education and other entities.
In a relationship that started in 2017, Clemenger’s work appears to have borne fruit across all three arms of the New Zealand military.
In the Army, applicant numbers in 2018 stood at 4038, before moving up to 4590 in 2020. They dipped in 2021 at the height of the COVID pandemic. Applicant numbers for 2023 have shot to 4761.
In the Royal NZ Airforce and Navy, the same pattern has emerged. In 2018, 1770 New Zealanders applied for the air force. Last year, it received 2018 applicants, piping the 2014 netted in 2020. The Navy’s applicant numbers have been steady with 1564 applicants in 2023, a jump from 2021 (1244) and 2022 (1228).
“Clemenger BBDO runs the recruitment advertising campaigns, not recruitment for the New Zealand Defence Force,” the NZDF explained.
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