Codewords

After two years of lockdowns, research showed young people were looking for a crew as much as a career. The Defence Force needed a campaign that could show what that feels like rather than describe it.

Codewords works on a simple idea. Put two people who served together in front of a camera, give them a word only they would recognise, and let them talk. Fifteen codewords unlocked fifteen stories, told by more than thirty personnel from the Navy, Army and Air Force.

The words ran on their own to begin with, in cinema, on social and on billboards, with nothing to explain them. Scanning or tapping one opened the story behind it on the campaign site, which carried on into the hundred or so roles the Services were recruiting for.