ROYAL NAVY RECRUITS MARINE ENGINEERS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGE

The Central Office of Information (COI) in collaboration with creative agencies, Marvellous and Glue, is helping the Royal Navy attract the best engineering talent to become officers through an interactive challenge played across an iPhone app and Facebook widget.

Core Facts

The Royal Navy Engineer Officer Challenge, will put potential recruits through their paces with 5 interactive missions each based on realistic Royal Navy training tasks. Utilising features including the iPhones touch screen interface and accelerometer, some challenges are set aboard HMS Deter, urgently needing repairs.
As the Lieutenant in charge, the player makes crucial decisions, as they would as an Engineering Officer - from fixing the engine or preparing for a simulated missile attack, to re-wiring the radar system.
After each challenge the player is presented with video footage revealing the impact of their decisions in the task. Once completed their score is submitted to a leaderboard where they can challenge a friend or simply visit the Royal Navy website for more in-depth career information, or join the Royal Navy Facebook group.
The Facebook widget replicates the iPhone app in allowing users to get the feel for a virtual hands on engineering experience, as well as enabling people to share among friends and start a discussion.
The Royal Navy Engineer Officer Challenge is available on the iPhone and iPod Touch and can be accessed via the iTunes app store. The widget can be downloaded from the Royal Navy Recruitment Facebook page, or the applications section on Facebook.

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When thinking of engineering careers potential candidates automatically default to civilian and commercial businesses so demonstrating how challenging and rewarding a Royal Navy Engineer Officer career can be was a key objective in this campaign.

Maxine Brown, Senior Interactive Services Manager at the Central Office of Information said:

The iPhone has provided us with the platform to develop an easily accessible interactive application direct to our audience, which provides the career information they need whilst driving awareness and giving each user a truly interactive taste of the real thing.

With this campaign, we wanted to replicate the demands on Royal Navy Officers, and challenge people to see how they cope with solving complex engineering tasks under pressure. The iPhone is perfect to display complex technology and by planting the campaign across social media its positioned where the next generation of Royal Navy Officers are right now.

Jon Carney, founder and CEO of Marvellous said: