Step inside a camouflage-netted tent, screens glowing with radar graphics, weapons schematics, and animated models of servicemen, and suddenly, you’re an air warfare officer on a mission. Your squadmates, a pilot and an engineer, guide you toward targets, but your fingers and brain are at odds. When the simulation ends, the score appears: D.
“It’s fine; as we say in the Air Force, you can only go up from here,” says the real air force pilot running the exercise.
This is the world of BLKJ Havas’ latest work for the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), an ambitious, immersive recruitment campaign for the government body.
The campaign, Find Your Squad. Find your #AboveAll, combines cinematic storytelling with interactive experiences, fuses mobile technology, social entertainment, and multiplayer gaming. Rather than a single manifesto film, BLKJ Havas has produced four mission-themed films, a branching-narrative TikTok ad, and the ‘Squad Ops’ game.
Rowena Bhagchandani, CEO and founder of BLKJ Havas, says the brief was clear: many potential recruits were unaware of the full spectrum of roles within a squadron.
"The Air Force has never struggled to attract recruits; there’s no shortage of interest. What we needed to do [with this campaign] was shine a light on the other vocations within the Force. There wasn’t enough awareness of the full range of roles, and that matters. To stay relevant, we had to show that every role is exciting and each involves technology, unique skills, and real expertise. That’s the side we wanted to bring forward,” says Bhagchandani.
Unlike conventional defence ads, #AboveAll is built for mobile, and it seamlessly syncs across three pocket-sized screens before leading the audience into a multiplayer game. It covers all nine vocations—from UAV pilots to aircrew specialists—shifting focus from the glamour of fighter pilots to teamwork, strategy, and mission-based engagement.
This shift towards tech-driven, interactive advertising was necessary, particularly to educate the public on the breadth of roles beyond flying planes.
Hollywood inspiration meets real-life action
In the famed Hollywood blockbuster saga Top Gun, Tom Cruise embarks on missions filled with insane stunts where his character, Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, rolls, dives, and performs high-G manoeuvres on the F-14 Tomcat. What’s more impressive is that these stunts weren’t simulations—US Navy pilots pulled these moves off on real F/A-18s.
The Top Gun franchise turned out to be a major inspiration for the campaign, drawing influence from the true-to-life action and aerial sequences. In ‘Find Your Squad. Find Your #AboveAll.’, the pilots and servicemen were active-duty RSAF personnel—no actors required.
“It’s all real—the pilots actually fly. They even flew the C-130 and we managed to shoot early in the morning. Everything in our film is so real—it’s all the actual people doing the jobs they do. That also comes from Top Gun,” says Khalid Osman, co-founder of BLKJ Havas.
The campaign was developed in collaboration with production studio Unit9, known for its immersive campaigns with Meta, Nike, and League of Legends 2. Over nine months from concept to launch, the goal was to push the boundaries of interactive storytelling and engagement in defence advertising.
Guilherme Machado, executive creative director at BLKJ Havas, emphasises the importance of having the right partners for the work, spotlighting how Unit9 has one of the best tech studios globally when it comes to creating a digital-first, immersive campaign—the perfect co-creator in crafting this tactical game.
And the name of the game? Authenticity. Realism. Impact. True to this ethos, RSAF personnel were directly involved in writing the missions shown in the films and gameplay alongside BLKJ Havas’ team, Osman explains.
“We didn’t want to over-dramatise—we wanted to be authentic. When you watch it, you think: ‘Okay, that’s the kind of job I’m interested in. I might have the skills for that'.”
Machado adds that it was important for them to work with the personnel carrying out the roles shown in the film and the game—not just the marketing team.
“It’s interesting; when we first had the script, the RSAF team was like, ‘No, this wouldn’t happen’, or ‘No, the mission wouldn’t go that way—that’s not how it works’,” he adds.
Bhagchandani explains that the gameplay was developed with extensive testing in the alpha, beta, and final stages to improve user experience and technical performance. The biggest challenge? Perfecting the viewing technology where multiple players can watch the film together and smoothly switch to playing as a team.
From my own experience, with admittedly average hand-eye coordination, the missions were challenging, testing reaction times, decision-making, coordination, and teamwork. It felt like playing a multiplayer game such as Battlefield, but with clearer objectives and a distinctly Air Force twist.
Digital-first, social-native recruitment
Beyond the immersive game, the campaign leaned into social-first strategies.
BLKJ Havas partnered with TikTok to produce a promotional interactive ad where users can participate in a mission and choose between branching narratives: awaiting instructions from their team or shooting targets right away. RSAF is no stranger to the popular social media app, where it has over 380,000 followers and its TikToks regularly amass over a million views. It’s become a frontline platform for its recruitment and branding.
“We realised you’re not going to attract the newer generation the same way because they don’t consume media traditionally. It’s all through the phone,” says Chia, adding that RSAF chose a digital-first approach as campaigns meant for TV or theatres rarely generate the same viral buzz and word-of-mouth momentum.
And RSAF’s recruiting strategy is in line with the growing trend of defence advertising shifting toward digital and social platforms. Several major militaries, mostly in the West, have taken to recruiting through social media like TikTok. In APAC, Australia saw record recruitment numbers, rising 17% this year after running targeted ads on TikTok.
RSAF, alongside the Singapore Army and Navy, is one of the few armed forces in APAC to actively use TikTok—verified and constantly posting trendy, creative, and at times even memeable content—at scale to recruit, and it’s paying off.
“Even just from the films alone, recruitment shows about a 30% rise, which is great,” Bhagchandani reveals before the multiplayer game’s launch.
Calling up the new generation
The RSAF first started integrating mobile technology in its recruitment in 2014 with ‘One Force’, a campaign produced by DBB, which set a precedent for the branch recruiting through mobile-first ads. The mobile game, 'One Force: Reloaded’ kept to simple graphics and had multi- and single-player options, mostly to target millennial recruits in the years following the boom of Facebook and Instagram.
For BLKJ Havas, who partnered with RSAF in 2021, the goal was to appeal to Gen Z—youth between 16 and 25 years old—who are even more digitally savvy and chronically online than generations before. Prior to this campaign, Machado explains the agency launched a website to educate Gen Z on different vocations, but “it wasn’t cutting through”—leading to the development of a highly shareable, multiplayer game.
“We’re talking to a generation that won’t even watch a two-minute or three-minute film unless it truly engages them. They’re mobile-first—always on their phones, always with their friends,” Machado adds.
And as for the future of defence advertising? Machado hopes this campaign can serve as a point of reference for creative agencies and armed forces alike in leveraging cutting-edge, immersive technology to capture a new generation of recruits.
“This generation wants to engage with content. They’re not just consumers; they appreciate being an active part of it,” he adds.
