Word Vomit is when I write without editing. Don’t bother reading.

I have an idea for a marketing campaign for the SAF. I was thinking about writing up a proposal and pitching it to them and hopefully making some money from it, but I figured- screw it, I have so many things on my mind, I might as well just write it out. (Actually, on second thought, now that I’m writing it out, I might as well share it with some people who might be able to help me.)

Here’s the idea. The SAF wants to get high-quality young men and women to sign on to the Army, Navy and Air Force. (And maybe the Coast Guard… but who wants to join the Coast Guard? LOL. Eh, a friend just pointed out to me that the Coast Guard is probably under the HOME team, under Home Affairs rather than Defence. But still, you get my point.)

How do you convince high-quality young men and women to sign on? Well, you have to put forward an intellectually and emotionally persuasive argument, obviously. How do you get that? You ask the most high-quality people you know, “Have you ever considered signing-on? What made you think about it?”

I never signed on to any uniformed group or large institution because I have a powerful inner voice that tells me that my most important Life’s Work will require me to operate as an independent agent- as Steve Jobs said, it’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

THAT SAID, I have on a few occasions seriously contemplated signing on. I believe that what made me want to sign on would be instrumental in getting people to actually sign on- because if you could persuade someone as renegade and anti-authority as me to sign on, then you should reasonably be able to persuade a lot of other people, too.

What persuaded me to contemplate signing on? Simply put- high quality individuals. I witnessed a lot of incompetence and stupidity during my NS experience, but I also had the genuine pleasure of encountering a few individuals who amazed me with their qualities. There are two particular guys I really admired- Warrant Ee from BMTC, Major Simon from SOTSC. (And a third would have been my VS Principal, Maj. Low Eng Teong.) I would seriously considering signing on to understudy any of these men.

I was also blown away by the professionalism and camaraderie of the gentlemen at Parachute Wing. I remember being a fly on the wall while the Red Lions were
having a post-jump debrief session. I’m used to seeing meetings being annoying and wasteful- people sitting around twiddling their thumbs, nobody really wanting to be there. I remember this was the complete opposite of what I expected, which is why this still sticks with me to this day. There was a small group of them, and they were all thoroughly engaged. There was no bureaucracy, no real formalities- everybody quickly shared their perspectives and opinions, one of them was leading the meeting but it was clear that any of them could have done it. The whole thing was a lesson to me in succinct badassery. They were succinct and effective, chop chop, cover everything, anything to take note of, what we can do better next time, how we can save ourselves this, what we’re going to do, done. Clinical, like assassins. And they were all fit as hell.

I remember being thoroughly impressed by the parachutists’ attention to detail, their focus, their knowledge. Lots of them were older guys, but their thinking and their modus operandi was sharp and no-nonsense.

I remember Major Simon being incredibly thoughtful and considerate. He once came to my store to talk to me, a lowly recruit. I remember him asking me, “Is there anything I can do to make your job easier?”  Everybody liked him. He was fit, intelligent, wise. I still think of him when I think about what it means to be a great leader. I remember actually being bummed out a little when I was posted out of that unit, because it meant that I would lose the opportunity to learn more from him.

I was always very impressed with how the commandos got stuff done when things needed to get done. I suppose putting together NDP every year is itself a pretty impressive logistical feat. If I wanted to promote the SAF, I imagine I’d talk about how we get our NSFs trained way quicker than most other militaries (I was told this story by some encik, not sure how true it is…)

Warrant Ee was what I’d call a ground-level philosopher. He was full of wisdom and insight. He was a reflective guy who’d clearly witnessed a lot. (I can totally imagine how he’d mock me for saying such nice things about him, lol) I know some of my peers found him a little bit annoying because he liked to talk so much, but I always enjoyed listening to anything he had to say. I remember him talking about how you should distrust anybody who claimed to be an expert on guns or anything else, because he himself had years of experience and was constantly learning. I remember him talking about the problem of accidental discharges happening despite any number of fail-safes, because of human error and our habit of assuming that someone else would have done their job, so we can be a little lax on our own.

Anyway the point is- it seems to me that there’s a gap between what people really love about being in the SAF, and what the SAF attempts to use to persuade people to sign on. The best SAF advertisement I’ve seen so far is the 40 years of NS one, where it shows the father and son going through their respective BMT experiences. There’s some real emotional weight in that one. I feel like it’s a little wasteful that this isn’t translated to their broader marketing campaigns. Does anybody remember the “My Boyfriend, Our Army” campaign? That one was just ripped to shreds by the public- mrbrown had a field day. This happened because nobody seriously is impressed by military personnel on the basis of them being personnel. The lighthearted fun approach is ironically the harder emotion to get right. If you really want to capture that, I think you have to show funny moments in the actual context of the military, where people actually laugh- hearing funny NS stories, etc.

Basically, it’s a stupid idea to try and create an artificial depiction of reality, when instead, you ought to use what already works- what already moves people, what already makes people laugh, what already makes people feel patriotic. I remember feeling patriotic when I walked into the army logistics base and I saw towering crates of emergency supplies. I remember my encik telling me about how quickly we execute our humanitarian rescue missions to other countries.