Promotion of a Detachment

The aim of this period is to look at ways to promote your detachment in three key areas.

Public Relations and the Local Community

Recruiting

Internal ACF and Regimental Affiliations

The reason and incentive combine as a negative and a positive. If your detachment is doing well, you and your cadets feel proud, if not you get closed down.

Public Relations & Local Community Aim of this is to foster goodwill with your neighbours, get the name of your detachment well known and fulfil the community service part of the APC syllabus. Community work is often seen as a pain. It requires a lot of organising and liaison. The benefits are very long term and it is far easier to lose goodwill than it is to gain it. When looked at closely, and divorced from recruiting, working for the local community can be very rewarding.

Schools If a school near you has an annual fete or event, ask the head whether you can assist. Schools regularly call parents in to help with heavier work, so there is scope for the ACF to get involved. Get cadets parents to save their coupons and send them in so the ACF gets the credit!

Borough Functions Most boroughs hold carnivals or something like them. Because of the amount of people who attend, these are perfect for us to get involved in. The best combination is to offer to assist and also get a static display or maybe a float.

Local Papers It is easy to get into the local papers. What a lot of people do is to send in the wrong type of photos. Papers want human interest. They want to see people, not things. Happy smiley faces and a few sentences of what they are smiling about. Issuing a press release is on the same lines. Short, concise and SPELL EVERYBODY'S NAME correctly! Editors will correct grammar etc. Send at least one release per month. If you are not sure whether the paper will find it interesting, read some of the crap stories in your local!

RBL The RBL usually only want to know on Rem Sun. Why? They are a fine organisation (rich & generous!) and worthy of a letter offering help. Write to the secretary of your local RBL and see what happens.

Neighbourhood Many of our neighbours think we are a pain. Shouting, the vehicles, noisy kids late at night etc. It is not easy or quick, but this negative local feeling can be reversed. Make sure your cadets understand why it is necessary for them to respect the local people. Encourage courtesy, especially in shops and on pathways. Maybe organising a Litter picking up session. Anything that gets your cadets in the public eye. Path clearing after a snowfall. The list is only limited by your imagination and a little goes a long way.

Recruiting

The aim of recruiting is obvious.

I have grouped recruiting into two areas.

Methods

Strategies

Recruiting is different from PR, as the emphasis is on interesting young people enough so they come along and find out. You must have a dedicated Recruiting officer to ease the potential recruit into the way we work. Maintaining that initial curiosity and interest is crucial.

Methods and Strategies are on a Handout. This is not meant to be exhaustive and imagination is the key, particularly in closed detachments or difficult areas.

Recruiting is one are where good practices need to be shared. Methods of Recruiting handout

Word of mouth Cheapest and commonest method. Often the most effective. Encourage cadets to talk to their friends about what they do in the ACF. It is even possible to do training sessions to improve cadets ability to talk to strangers from lower school years. Issue leaflets and photos to provide evidence and overcome scepticism

Leaflet drops Most expensive and if done badly, largely ineffective. Involves delivering a leaflet to every household in the local area. The cost comes in the production of enough leaflets. One way to increase effectiveness is to use cadets who have newspaper rounds for delivery. Only deliver to houses that have children (look for window stickers, toys, state of the house etc). One other way that dramatically increases effectiveness is to put in the leaflet "If there is no-one in your family who is interested, please pass on to anyone you know who might be" or similar. HAVE A MAP ON THE LEAFLET

Posters If posters are of good quality, very expensive, but fairly effective. Ask every cadet to find two places that will allow a poster to go up. Involve parents and their places of work. Do not let cadets put posters in illegal places. HAVE A MAP ON THE POSTER

Awareness Days (High Streets) Using the caravan. You will almost certainly need permission from the local Council for this. Get this first before you book the caravan. Contact the Roads & Public Rights of Ways Officer at your Council for advice. Timing and location is crucial depending on strategy (see later) Make sure your cadets are fully briefed and motivated towards recruiting. Get addresses and telenumbers if possible and FOLLOW UP after the event.

Council and Youth Directories The local Council will have a directory of approved youth groups. Get yourself in there and have a user-friendly contact system. The councils frequently allow youth groups to recruit on their facilities, such as libraries or town halls.

Other Youth organisations (Poaching) Youth Groups, Scouts, School clubs, Church groups, Venture Scouts and other cadet organisations all have young people in them. Poaching is wrong and we are above all that! Should you decide that you are not, your angle on this one is that we are more exciting, cheaper, varied and tougher.

School Visits, outside Using the caravan. Very, very effective, but difficult to organise. You must ask permission from the Council and I strongly recommend the school as well to avoid bad feeling. You get to the school very early, stake a parking spot outside the main entrance (away from the hazard lines!). Open up and catch every pupil as they enter the school.

School Year assemblies Very effective. Most work involved. You need an efficient well rehearsed presentation. If you have a video, so much the better. Make sure you are giving the presentation to the correct year group.

Local Events At any local events, you should have pairs of cadets with leaflets going round and chatting to youngsters of the right age. If possible tie in with any Community work you are doing, such as marshalling.

Jurding Very effective, only usable under special circumstances. Named after Capt Neil Jurd RLC, and ex cadet. What he did was become a Prefect at school. One day the Form Tutor did not show. He dashed off the register then spent the next twenty minutes "encouraging" fifteen of the class to join. Jurding has become synonymous with using position and occasion to best advantage. Any captive audience can be Jurded.

Strategies All the strategies below use one, some or all of the methods. Adapt to fit your local circumstances. Those with closed units are at a disadvantage on flexibility.

Immediate Used when recruiting is very urgent and you have sufficient resource to cope with a large influx of recruits. Employ help from Company, CAAs & Sector. You will certainly have to take time off work Get extra adult help. Impress on your cadets the urgency. Use every method and take risks as necessary. Take anyone who walks through the door.

Rolling Assessment If your detachment is strong and you only want to keep numbers trickling in for ease of management, try using all the methods one at a time. Consider a waiting list. Keep records of which methods work by asking the new recruits what made them join. In past assessment I have found that School Visits (outside) and Word of Mouth are the best methods. You may very well find that things are different where you are.

Timed Targeting Probably 80% of our recruits come from school contacts. Gear recruiting around school timings. It is best to plan & prepare any campaign during school holidays because the best time to recruit is in the first and second weeks after the school holidays, especially the 6 week summer break. Youngsters are bored and want something new. If you wait until the end of September, they have all been signed up by school clubs. New School Year Targeting is an annual essential for my detachment.

Parent Targeting Most parents are supportive, some are indifferent but cadets with parents who are anti, rarely last long! This strategy is aimed at the parents first. Convince the parent and the recruits follow. Send a letter, posters and leaflets to all your cadets parents asking them to publicise and recommend the ACF to all their friends. Ask parents to place posters on office bulletin boards. Many cadets have parents who are in a position to help (teachers, police, shopkeepers etc are invaluable!) Consider giving presentations or High St displays to places where few cadets but many parents go to.

School Targeting Undertake a survey on which schools your cadets go to. If there is a school in your area that is under-represented at your detachment, target it. Point all your resource at it. Get posters put up, offer to help the school in some way, ask for permission to do visits, either assemblies or outside.

Incentive Often fairly effective, although it relies on the mercenary principle. In an ideal world, the cadets would want to recruit simply out of loyalty for the unit. The incentive gives them the little extra push. Offer rewards of money or kit when cadets bring in recruits. For example, Three recruits will earn a new shirt. Five recruits earn a combat jacket and so on. Never use promotion as an incentive for recruiting.

Ordered Recruiting This is the same as Incentive except you are insisting that it happens. You order every cadet to bring in one recruit. It would be very bad leadership to punish a cadet for failing to do this. Put a chart up showing who has done what and you will find that the cadets will not want to be the last one who brings one in.

Joint Efforts United we stand. Contact other detachments. Pool your efforts and resources and you will find that you really are doubling your chances. A concerted borough campaign does pay immense dividends.

Waiting List This was traditionally regarded as the Recruiting Grail. Your ultimate aim. This is no longer the case. A waiting list is a good tool for confirming interest. If your unit is strong, semi committed recruits will weaken the structure. If some one is prepared to wait two or three months before they can even join, they will be more likely to stay and contribute to the strength of your unit Internal ACF and Regimental Affiliations

Few things give me more of a buzz than hearing other ACF AIs talking about a cadet who is one of mine. There is immense pride to be gained from the achievements of your cadets. Publicise all your cadets successes. Participate in anything that shows your detachment in a greater light, particularly in affiliated events. The more effort, the greater your detachments glory. A few ideas

Commendations If one of your cadets, a group or the whole detachment has done something they are really proud of, write and tell the Commandant. The Commandant must be bored rigid with bad news and problems, give him something to cheer about. Get it on Sector orders. More good news stories, they might get into the Cadet Journal.

Competitions Cadets love to compete and we should be encouraging them. There is only one thing they love more and that is winning. You cannot win if you are not competing. Affiliation competitions are a good time to get known and to increase an already high regard for the ACF by the Army.

Sports Talk to your cadets about what sports they excel at in School. Enter them for Sector sports. It is a major buzz watching one of your cadets come first or scoring the winning try. It is also good for team morale and reflected glory for your cadets to be able to say "one of OUR Corporals won the District final".

Activity You will get a reputation for being a go ahead unit if you are continually doing something. If you work on a premise of one camp every other month, you will be doing all right. Less and your cadets may get bored. More and you will be crawling up the wall after a while!

Annual Inspection & Mayoral Visits Your aim is to not worry about these. If your detachment is running smoothly, you will have no problems. Set a standard and maintain it at all costs. Use these as an opportunity to improve contact with your affiliated Regiment.

Star Boards & DS Get yourself, your staff and your senior cadets onto these boards as DS. This will reflect well on your detachment in the long run. It is also a good way to keep your staff and seniors' knowledge up to date. It will mean that you have less problems when you are putting them in for promotion because everyone knows them.

End A good detachment commander will run a good detachment. Anything positive done by anybody in the detachment will reflect on everybody in it. QUESTIONS