How many Australian Defence Force (ADF) staff does it take to come up with a social media post for Halloween? At least three, according to internal communications obtained by Crikey.
On Halloween this year, Defence staff posted fake images to the Australian Army’s social media accounts. The images featured soldiers — presumably ADF members — fighting against various scary-looking creatures, and were captioned with the words “Happy Halloween”.
In case there was any risk that a user would think pictures showing soldiers clashing with massive, six-armed monsters were real, the accounts added a disclaimer: “These images have been digitally altered”, accompanied by a warning emoji.
A freedom of information request seeking internal correspondence in relation to the posts reveals the painstaking process it takes to create a light-hearted piece of social media.
One document, which appears to be a social media content plan, shows the levels of approval the monstrous posts had to go through.
“Drafted by: [redacted]. Reviewed by: [redacted] suggested tweak to the ‘warning’ text’. Approved by [redacted],” it reads.
Another chat log shows how staff mooted different permutations of the posts. After one staff member drafted the posts, another seriously gave feedback on different versions of the images.
“No. 2 is perfect. For no. 3 I prefer v2, and I think it will align with [redacted]’s feedback. For no. 1 I am on the fence as to what version I prefer so whatever you two think.”
Staff painstakingly pored over every part of the caption, down to the interpretation of an emoji.
“When we say [warning] — do we mean the exclamation point emoji?” asked one staff member.
“Yeah the exclamation point emoji,” another replied two minutes later.
“Cool thanks approved.”
The Halloween posts attracted a fair amount of social media attention (although not uniformly positive), allaying staff’s pre-post jitters.
“Hope we get some good engagement!” one person wrote before the images were posted.
“I really hope so too!!!!” the other replied.
