Irish Defence Forces 'Join Our Team' campaign by Rothco increased female applications by 65% in three weeks, winning a Silver Lion at Cannes Lions 2016.
ARCHIVEIrish Defence Forces Recruitment Campaign That Reframed Military Service for Women
The Irish Defence Forces' 'Join Our Team' campaign is a 2016 short-form recruitment film created by Dublin agency Rothco, targeting women aged 18 to 25 who participated in contact team sports across Ireland, designed to shift perceptions of military service and increase qualified female applicants to Óglaigh na hÉireann.
The campaign launched in April 2016, with the film subsequently submitted to the creative archive in July 2016. Its central strategic premise rested on a single, precise insight: women who already played contact sport possessed the physical conditioning, team discipline, and competitive instinct that the Defence Forces required. The campaign's tagline — 'You've been training all your life for this job. You just didn't know it' — made that connection explicit, as reported by Little Black Book. Rather than ask women to imagine a new life, the film told them they were already living it.
In Ireland, the campaign operated against a clearly defined government mandate. The 2015 White Paper on Defence, according to Military Ie, had set a target of raising female representation within the Defence Forces to 12 percent of total strength. At the point of the campaign's launch, women represented approximately 10 percent of total applications in the prior year, per Iapi Ie. The estimated target audience was approximately 11,700 women already participating in relevant contact team sports in Ireland, according to lbbonline.com. The entire campaign ran on a reported budget of approximately €20,000, as noted by lbbonline.com, making its ambition and ultimate reach a defining characteristic of the work. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 69 out of 100.
ARCHIVERothco identified a precisely defined audience pool rather than broadcasting broadly across the Irish market. The agency's strategy team, comprising Emer Howard and Emer Fitzgerald, recognised that the Defence Forces' recruitment challenge was not awareness but relevance, according to lbbonline.com. Women of eligible age were not applying because they did not see military service as something intended for them — not because they lacked the underlying aptitude or physical capacity.
The strategic approach represented a measurable departure from convention in Irish public service advertising. Rather than emphasising duty, tradition, or institutional prestige — approaches associated with legacy military recruitment campaigns — Rothco built its case on the lived experience of its target audience. Women who played rugby, GAA football, camogie, and similar contact sports were, the strategy argued, already demonstrating the attributes the Defence Forces valued. Emer Howard, as quoted by lbbonline.com, noted that the team became focused on the idea that these women had been training all their lives for this without knowing it.
In the broader Irish advertising landscape, public service recruitment campaigns have historically competed for attention against commercial employers offering graduate schemes and private-sector career positioning. The 2016 campaign distinguished the Defence Forces from those competing messages by reframing the institution itself — not as an authority asking for sacrifice, but as a team seeking people with specific, demonstrable skills. The initial audience pool of approximately 1.8 million Irish women, per military.ie, was deliberately narrowed to roughly 11,700 contact-sport participants, per lbbonline.com, making the media targeting as precise as the creative proposition.
Ray Swan directed the 'Join Our Team' film alongside Paul Power, with Swan also serving as Art Director on the project. The production took the form of a social experiment documentary rather than a conventionally staged advertisement, a structural choice that placed real women — drawn from contact sports communities in Ireland — at the centre of the narrative without immediately revealing the military context of what they were being asked to do.
The film presented participants with a series of physical and team-based challenges before disclosing that the exercises mirrored Defence Forces selection criteria. The reveal functioned as the campaign's emotional and rhetorical climax: the women had already succeeded. Copywriter Emma Sharkey crafted the campaign's central line — 'You've been training all your life for this job. You just didn't know it' — which lbbonline.com identifies as the organising idea for both the film and the wider recruitment messaging. Producer Emma Ellis oversaw the production, with animation handled by Darach McHugh and sound produced by Mutiny.
The documentary register gave the film a credibility that scripted advertising would have struggled to achieve in the same context. In Ireland, where scepticism toward institutional communication is a well-documented audience trait, the choice to show rather than claim was strategically sound as well as creatively distinctive. The digital and social amplification of the film was managed internally within Rothco by Daniel Coss, Daire Lennon, and Amy Lyons, ensuring the targeting precision of the strategy was maintained through to distribution. Managing Director Richard Carr and Account Director Katie Oslizlok led the client relationship, with Account Executive Ali Crowley supporting the account.
The campaign delivered results that were immediate and quantifiable within the Irish recruitment context. Female applications to the Defence Forces increased by 65 percent within three weeks of launch, according to iapi.ie. The campaign reached its stated target of 577 qualified female leads within that same three-week window, per iapi.ie. Annual female applicants rose from 350 in 2015 to 779 in 2016, as reported by Adworld Ie — more than doubling the absolute volume of applications from women in a single campaign cycle.
The longer-term structural impact was equally significant. Female inductions into the Defence Forces rose from 23 in 2015 to 47 in 2016 and then to 73 in 2017, according to adworld.ie, indicating that the campaign's effect on the recruitment pipeline extended beyond its active run. In 2016, the campaign won a Silver Lion in the Creative Data category at Cannes Lions, as reported by lbbonline.com — a result that affirmed the work's precision targeting and data-informed strategy as much as its creative execution.
The entire outcome was delivered on a reported budget of approximately €20,000, per lbbonline.com, a figure that underscores how tightly scoped audience definition and a single strong creative idea can outperform campaigns of substantially greater resource. In the Irish public service advertising sector, the 'Join Our Team' campaign stands as a reference point for insight-led, measurable recruitment communication.
The 'Join Our Team' campaign was a 2016 recruitment film by Rothco targeting women in contact sports across Ireland. It used a social experiment documentary format to show that women who played team sports already possessed the qualities the Defence Forces sought, built around the line 'You've been training all your life for this job. You just didn't know it.'
Rothco, a Dublin-based advertising agency, created the campaign. Directors Ray Swan and Paul Power led the film's production, with Emma Sharkey as copywriter, Emma Ellis as producer, and strategy developed by Emer Howard and Emer Fitzgerald, according to campaign credits documented at lbbonline.com.
Female applications increased by 65 percent within three weeks of the campaign launching, according to iapi.ie. Annual female applicants rose from 350 in 2015 to 779 in 2016, per adworld.ie, and female inductions rose from 23 in 2015 to 47 in 2016 and 73 in 2017, also per adworld.ie.
The 'Join Our Team' campaign won a Silver Lion in the Creative Data category at Cannes Lions 2016, as reported by lbbonline.com. The award recognised the campaign's precision in using audience data — specifically women participating in contact team sports — to define and reach a qualified recruitment target.
The campaign ran on a reported budget of approximately €20,000, according to lbbonline.com. Despite this limited spend, it reached its stated target of 577 qualified female leads within three weeks and more than doubled the annual volume of female applications to the Irish Defence Forces compared to the previous year.
Rothco's strategy identified women in contact team sports as an audience that already demonstrated the physical conditioning and team discipline the Defence Forces required, per lbbonline.com. The 2015 Government White Paper on Defence, according to military.ie, had set a target of raising female representation to 12 percent, giving the campaign a specific and measurable mandate.
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