Baghdad | Los Angeles

In 2005 the U.S. Army had a problem that no amount of ammunition could solve. With recruitment rates dwindling at an unprecedented rate, the Army reached out to an unlikely resource to help them attract new soldiers: advertising. Though the product has never changed, its message to the public has.

2005: The Military’s Year of Infamy

In May of 2005, the Army announced that it missed its active-duty recruiting goal by 1,661 recruits, or 25 percent. It was the fourth consecutive month that the Army failed to meet a monthly recruiting quota. In June, Gallup released a poll that showed that nearly six in 10 Americans thought it was not “worth going to Iraq.”

It was clear the military was losing the battle over the hearts and minds of potential recruits here at home. To confront this new reality, they took a route more characteristic of the private sector: They switched advertising agencies.

On August 8, the Army released a Request for Proposals – a bidding invitation for prospective suppliers – to furnish the active-duty Army and U.S. Army Reserve with, according to a Department of Defense press release, a “tactical advertising strategy” that would include television, radio, print, and Internet advertisements.

On December 7, the Army awarded a five-year contract to McCann Erickson, one of the world’s largest advertising firms with contracts with many of the world’s largest corporations, including Microsoft, Hitachi, Intel, and Verizon Wireless. Most notably, they produced one of the most repeatable commercial taglines in the country: “There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else there’s Mastercard.”

The price tag for the Army’s new advertising venture: $1.35 billion, double the advertising budget in 2003. In that year, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office, the military spent $600 million on advertising.

The Army, it seems, hopes that one thing money can buy is recruits.

“This is a Product Problem”

By selecting an ad agency like McCann, which is known for its hip and youth-oriented campaigns, the Army is acknowledging the importance of reaching Generation Y, an audience which they have admittedly had difficulty reaching.

“The past approaches of previous agencies has been stuck on television and old advertising approaches and not necessarily going with our market,” says Donald Bartholomew, director of Marketing, Education and Outreach at U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Ky.

Given its track record, McCann Worldgroup is uniquely suited to reaching the Army’s target audience.
“McCann is more well poised to [speak to young adults] than most agencies because first we have a very broad range of clients for whom young adults are a target,” says Lisa Nocella, senior vice president and total communications director for McCann’s Army account. “Several years ago we established an entity called TAG, which is a young adult marketing think tank within our four walls. What it did was aggregate the internal expertise of all of our clients to speak to young adults.”

Of course, even if the Army successfully accomplishes its rebranding mission, it must still overcome the realities of wartime: 4,201 American soldiers dead, 4.2 million displaced Iraqi citizens and untold Iraqi deaths, and over $3 trillion U.S. dollars spent on the war.

These are the figures that dictate many Millennials’ perception of the war.

“The Army has lost touch with their market,” says Sasha Strauss, managing director at Innovation Protocol, a Los Angeles-based brand development group. “This is a product problem. A bad product only gets worse with good advertising.”

Staff Sergeant Kyle Hausmann Stokes, who served with the 150th Infantry in Baghdad and is now a film student at the University of Southern California, understands the obstacles the war in Iraq poses for Army recruiters.

“It’s the war; it’s the chance that you might die,” says Stokes. “They call it the sacrifice. That’s a tough sell. Not many people are willing to do that.”

No matter how hip or innovative the Army Strong campaign is, the realities of the war present a significant challenge to standard advertising procedure.

“That works for cool cars or cool beer,” Strauss said. “It doesn’t work for ‘sign up and get your ass beat.’ Never in the history of advertising has a product that’s not wanted been marketed so heavily.”

Changing of the Guard

Early TV ads were cheery, sometimes even cheesy. This optimism became a staple of military television advertising, especially once the Army became an all volunteer force in 1973. Themes like “Today’s Army wants to join you” (1973) and “This is the Army” (1977-1979) were created straight-forward, unadorned, simple. The formula worked. No recruiting goals were missed and it would stay that way throughout the Army’s most successful marketing campaign to date: the “Be All That You Can Be” account.

One of the most recognizable taglines in advertising history, “Be All That You Can Be” was by all accounts a success. That message began in 1981. Army recruitment figures increased immediately and went nearly 20 years without missing a monthly quota. The ads were sunny, keying in on the general economic comfort of the Reagan and Clinton years. But in 1999 the Army missed a monthly recruiting goal for the first time in decades.

“The research we got in ’99 and 2000 was, ‘it was corny,’ ‘it was like my dad talking to me about what am I going to do with my life,’ that kind of stuff,” says Michael Sullivan, a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Recruiting. “It wasn’t resonating with the target age anymore.”

Be All That You Can Be was scrapped in 2001 and replaced by the “Army of One” campaign. It would be the Army’s first attempt to sway the cagey Generation Y consumer. Its effect was unexpected.
23-year-old Sergeant Stokes, who said he became a Paratrooper because he saw it in an Army advertisement, says that the Army of One tagline became fodder for soldiers.

“We joke about [‘the Army of One’] in the military,” says Stokes. “When you’re a young private who starts smarting off at the mouth or do not follow orders, we will jokingly say, ‘look at this fucking kid over here. He’s an Army of one.’”

“The Military is not about you. It’s about the team, the man or woman to your left and your right. It’s not about the individual. We ultimately serve the greater good of the people. So an ‘Army of One,’ it’s kind of funny that they came up with that.”

The Army was not prepared for the public’s literal interpretation of Army of One and it was abandoned in 2005 and replaced with McCann’s Army Strong account.

Today’s television spots look nothing like the Army ads of old. The Army Strong campaign, a McCann product, is bold, theatric and jarring when compared to the “Congratulations, private” pathos of past advertisements. The new ads have the aesthetics of a modern war film – or a war video game. Slow motion close-ups of soldiers storming an unspecified target with guns raised are a recurring image, as is a rapid fire show of individual soldiers’ faces, which often concludes an Army Strong spot. This type of ad, with its gun-powered histrionics and individual appeals, is at once linked to classic military advertisements and a departure from its messages. They are simple and dramatic, offering the exciting things kids can do in wartime. They are, by design and without pretense, built for a specifically distracted and cynical generation of youth.

“The rousing music, base emotional appeals to selflessness, seem specifically targeted to 12 year-olds, or the 12 year-olds that exist in so many of us,” says Columbia University professor Nick Turse, author of “The Complex.” “These ads are carefully constructed and scientifically designed to appeal to target populations which are, of course, kids and young adults. You only need to look at the number of American teenagers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan to understand that the military is most certainly targeting kids with its ads and doing so fairly effectively.”

Yeiser Covarrubias, a sophomore at Hollywood High School and a cadet in its Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program, says he likes the military advertisements he sees on television. He also says they influence how he envisions his future in the armed forces.

“I’ll probably join the navy, cuz that looks more fun,” says Covarrubias. “You get to like drop off planes and stuff, into the water.”

Like Sergeant Stokes, Covarrubias’ potential decision to join the military is affected by the commercials he sees. For now, he says he will wait until his senior year before deciding whether to join the Army or go to college.

This is how the Army imagined the advertising chain of command to work: a theme is dictated from the top, interpreted by its advertisers, and a pathway is paved for prospective soldiers into the military.
From there, it’s up to the recruiters.

“I think one of the things we do pretty well is looking where the population is moving to, so we can have a presence there,” says Bartholomew of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command. “We do a pretty good job of knowing where schools are being built and where population centers are moving to so that we can have a physical presence of the ground.”

Selling the Service

To get into the hearts and minds of America’s kids, the Army knows that they must also get inside the minds of those closest to their target; they have begun targeting everyone who influences a prospective soldier’s major decisions. The military calls these people “influencers.”

“It’s been more difficult with the two wars going on to talk with the kids and get them to come in and talk,” says Sullivan. “A lot of that has to do with the influencers.”

Defined by the Army as any center of persuasion in a prospective soldier’s life, this unique demographic has become a central focus for the Army Strong campaign. These figures have always been significant, but in the last three years, advertisements have begun specifically targeting influencers for the first time.

These influencers – be they parents, guardians, coaches, even clergy – play an integral role in communicating the Army “brand” to its consumers. Especially during the preliminary stages, when Army creative teams employ the services of research groups like Millward Brown and the RAND Corporation, to begin asking the questions they want their advertisements to answer.

To aid their advertising strategy, the Army – along with the other branches of the armed forces – utilizes polls and surveys written by the Department of Defense. The Joint Advertising Market & Research Studies (JAMRS) program based in the DOD works directly with the Army’s marketing department to provide the demographic data used to inform the creative process.

In April 2008, a JAMRS study found that 62 percent of youths said they would “definitely not” join the Army, its lowest point in 12 years, according to Bartholomew.

Another study, the Youth and Advertising Trends Study (YATS), researches the habits of target youth. The marketing command then uses the data to compile more effective campaigns.

These studies have found that prospective soldier’s fit into four broad categories, or “macro segments.” Listed in the Army Strong media launch guide (2006), the segments are:

• Defenders: “Interested in protecting their beliefs, family, friends, and culture.”
• Unrealized Dreamers: “Interested in finding a path and reaching their goals.”
• Have it Nows: “Interested in gaining status by acquiring things and experiences.”
• Option Seekers: “Interested in being charge of their own destiny.”

Surely, any 18-24 year old can be lumped into one of the four categories. Yet, it suggests how the Army uses demographic data to inform multi-year advertising campaigns. Once armed with these macro segments, specific ads target specific demographics.

A “Defender” ad
An “Unrealized Dreamers” ad
A “Have it Now” ad
An “Option Seeker” ad

“We could tell what kind of person you are.”

Perhaps most staggering about today’s military advertising is its sheer pervasiveness. Army Strong is everywhere, from sponsorships for content on ESPN and Cartoon Network to military-themed virtual reality theme parks like the Army Experience Center in Philadelphia. The Army’s Web site even has a First Person Shooter video game called America’s Army, where potential recruits can immerse themselves in images of war. It’s all part of a multi-pronged effort to get kids excited about the military.

“For the first time, we see things like [military ads] at the movie theatre, in video games like America’s Army,” says Arlene Inouye, a coordinator with the Coalition Against Militarism in Schools. “They are selling this virtual experience; you get a kick when you try these rifles and shoot these targets. [The Army uses] the internet, all kinds of ways to expand their recruiting base.”

Like big tobacco, the armed forces have had to answer to critics that say they are peddling to children. In reality, the Army makes it no secret they are targeting youth. They don’t just sell to kids; they study kids.

“[Research] provides feedback on what these Millennials are thinking,” says Bartholomew. “And that has an impact on what level of advertising we place against influencers and which ones we place against prospects. If you can address some of the issues – such as safety, or education, or well-being, or compensation – depending on the amount of concern, you can address them in your advertisements.”
With the demographic data they’ve compiled, Army marketers feel confident they can not only know what target youth are thinking, but what kind of person they are.

“If I had your address, your sex, and your ethnicity, we could probably in pretty good terms tell what kind of person you are, what you like to do,” says Bartholomew. “We’re talking in a language that [prospects] can understand. That’s really what it’s all about.”

Recession as recruiter

By the Army’s own measurements — periodic recruiting goals — the Army Strong campaign has been a success. The Army has met every annual quota since 2006. But now a powerful new factor has come into play.

In recent months every branch of the armed forces has seen its recruitment figures swell, largely on the strength of what even the most ingenious ad campaign could not purchase: economic recession.

According to Army statistics, 9,568 new soldiers were enlisted into active duty in January, along with another 3,223 that enlisted into the Army Reserve. This latest recruitment figure is a boon compared to the 5,114 soldiers who enlisted into the Army in February 2005, which was nearly 2,000 recruits short of its monthly goal and started a trend of four consecutive months of missed recruiting targets.

Hard times, it appears, are making the recruiter’s job easier than it has been in years.