Recruiting duty offer

The pattern

This still is filed under Recruiting duty offer.

Define

Join us, framed as who you become, not as a job listing.

Mechanism

Identity offer. The role is a self. Benefits are secondary to the person you will be after you say yes.

Verdict

We are recruiting into a hard, proud, or transforming role: service, craft, a company with a real culture.

Why it works

The picture is almost all flags: the lion, the eagles and the double cross of the homeland, marked ČSA with regiment numbers, flying beside the Stars and Stripes over cheering soldiers in silhouette. Two small words in the headline do the recruiting: OUR makes the reader a member already, and FREE turns the flags into a nation still to be won rather than a memory. Service is sold as belonging to a people, not as a job.

The big idea

The homeland's lion, eagles and double cross already fly as regimental flags of a free Czechoslovak force, and the reader is called to take his place beneath them.

The offer

Join the ranks marching under the free Czechoslovak colors.

Lines from the ad

CZECHOSLOVAKS! JOIN OUR FREE COLORS!

Steal this when

Use it when you recruit from a community whose own symbols carry more weight than any benefit you could list.

The emotion

Written to Belonging. It makes the Say move.

The homeland's lion, eagles and double cross fly as regimental colors, and the word OUR treats the reader as a member already, asking him to take his place, not change to fit in.