New Zealand Defence Force
Te Ope Kaatua O Aotearoa

22 November 2006

Air Force Goes Special Ops

Get ready to Bring It On! That’s the key message from the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) over the next three months as Air Force Special Ops takes flight.

One of the key challenges facing the RNZAF in the medium term is to grow its personnel numbers.

According to Squadron Leader Shaun Sexton, the Air Force’s Director of Recruitment, recent recruitment initiatives have done well but they are starting to have less impact.

“We have to work very hard to fill positions in some key areas. This is of particular importance as it will ensure we have sufficient people to adequately resource and operate our exciting aircraft capabilities of the future”, he said.

Squadron Leader Sexton puts this down to New Zealand’s highly competitive employment and tertiary training markets, plus youth are increasingly disinterested in traditional forms of advertising and seek opportunities to engage with a brand on their own terms.

In order to improve engagement with potential recruits and improve Air Force recruitment success now and in the future the RNZAF is launching the worlds first Vocational Reality Game — Air Force Special Ops.

Air Force Special Ops has been developed in partnership with advertising and IT partners. According to one of the game’s key developers, Bob Moore from Frank Advertising, Air Force Special Ops is a world first.

“It’s a fully integrated reality game and recruitment campaign that challenges, informs, educates, entertains and inspires ", Mr Moore said.

Air Force Special Ops is a 3-month long, web-based interactive game the like of which NZ has never seen before. It is a training exercise, a test of wits, an insight into today’s Air Force and a real-life nationwide manhunt in which gamers will have to use the web, text, email, getting out and about – whatever gets the job done in order to solve the clues and FIND THE PARACHUTIST to win the ultimate Air Force New Zealand Defence Force Te Ope Kaatua O Aotearoa

The hub of Special Ops game play is the website www.airforcespecialops.co.nz It is here that gamers will be tested to the limit with a huge variety of mental, physical, research and knowledge challenges based on careers in the Air Force, their environment and more.

Are you ready to Bring It On.

ENDS

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