New recruiting propeganda from the Army thank God most parents are not this stupid....

Uncle Sam wants you, and it shows

Aggressive ad efforts tackle Army recruiting woes from many angles

08:48 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 31, 2005

By RICHARD WHITTLE / The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON – Father and son lean on the rail of the side porch after dinner, peering out into an evening drizzle. The young man wears an Army uniform.

"You´re a changed man," the father tells his son solemnly, pride in his eyes.

"How´s that?" the freshly minted soldier replies.

"When you got off that train back there, you did two things you´ve never done before. At least not at the same time. You shook my hand. And then you looked me square in the eye. Where´s that come from?"

The son begins to grin slightly as the picture fades to a slogan: U.S. Army. Help Them Find Their Strength.

Unable to drum up the recruits it has needed each month since January, the Army has begun broadcasting new TV ads aimed at "influencers" – parents, coaches, teachers and other adults who can be an obstacle to recruiting.

"It´s a bit too early to tell" whether the ads will boost recruiting numbers, Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of Army recruiting, told reporters at the Pentagon.

But poignant TV ads aimed at parents are just one of a host of creative recruiting tactics the Army and Army National Guard are using as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a better economy make military service a harder sell.

For all the advertising effort, recruiting is sagging badly. As of April 30, the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard were 18,135 recruits short of the combined 89,599 new members they were aiming for by that point in fiscal year 2005, which began Oct. 1.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Army has boosted its advertising budget from $140 million to $180 million a year. It has enhanced its www.goarmy.com Web site, created a new Web page aimed at parents and vastly expanded its sports sponsorships.

The service´s Golden Knights precision parachute team has performed for years at air shows, races, football games and other sporting events.

But since 9-11, "They have been jumping down onto the beaches down in Florida during spring break and speaking to young people, not only high school but college students, about the U.S. Army," said Army spokesman Paul Boyce.

Even before Sept. 11, the Army sponsored National Hot Rod Racing Association driver Tony Schumacher. Since then, the service has begun sponsoring NASCAR driver Joe Nemechek, two riders in the Pro Stock Motorcycle Racing circuit, the U.S. Army All-American Bowl high school football game in San Antonio, three professional bull riders and an eight-member professional rodeo team.

The Army sponsors events such as racing and rodeo because marketing surveys show that their fans – both potential recruits and influencers – are "positive toward military service," noted Anthony Ciliberto, deputy director of strategic outreach for the U.S. Army Accessions Command.

The service also sends recruiters to auto shows, concerts and other public events in an "urbanized" H2 Hummer painted in flashy yellow and black with chrome wheels and grille. At outdoor events, this "Taking it to the Streets" program includes two tractor trailer-sized displays that include a helicopter flight simulator and a rock-climbing wall.

The National Guard, which handles its own recruiting and has a much smaller $42 million advertising budget, has been beefing up its advertising, too.

"We really began to notice the trends last April, that after seven straight years of achieving our end-strength, we were going to come to some challenging months," said Lt. Col. Michael Jones, deputy chief of the National Guard´s recruitment and retention division. "The decision was made that we´ve got to do things differently to be successful."

The Guard has "completely revamped our Web site," www.1-800-go-guard.com, he said. It´s also changed its theater advertising from still to moving slides. And in certain theaters in 22 states, including Texas, tickets sold to patrons 17 to 39 include coupons inviting them to the Guard´s Web site.

The Army Guard also puts reply-postcard inserts into Blockbuster DVDs and sends direct mail solicitations to Blockbuster customers who rent video games.

"There´s one person who can help keep America strong ... You," the message on the cards reads. "In the Army National Guard, you can!"

Earlier this year, the Guard even considered spending several million dollars to buy the naming rights to RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., where the Washington Nationals baseball team plays. After key members of Congress objected, Guard commander Lt. Gen. Steven Blum vetoed that idea.

The Army also sends fliers to its target age group by direct mail, advertising enlistment bonuses of up to $20,000, college money of up to $65,000 and "30 days of paid vacation earned each year." Those who respond on the Web, by phone or by postage-paid postcard get a free Army T-shirt.

Because National Guard units are state organizations whose troops answer to the governor unless ordered to federal duty, authority to come up with new recruiting gimmicks has been given to local units, so practices vary from state to state.

The West Virginia National Guard, for example, is "heavy on military police units," said spokesman Maj. Todd Harrell, so one MP company recently held a "Career Day for Law Enforcement." Local police and sheriff´s departments and the state police sent representatives to tell potential recruits how service as a military police officer in the National Guard could pave the way to a law enforcement career.

Advertising and marketing professionals said there isn´t necessarily anything wrong with the Army´s ad campaigns, which Army spokesman Mr. Boyce said focus on two themes: career opportunities and patriotism.

The simple fact, they agreed, is that promoting the idea of military service when U.S. troops are being killed in Iraq nearly every day and the economy is offering other job opportunities is a hard sell.

Michael Hylden, 18, of Plano, a 2004 graduate of Jesuit College Preparatory School in Dallas, said he considered joining the military after high school but was uninspired by the Army´s advertisements – especially its "Army of One" slogan.

"The Army never really got me interested because the ´Army of One´ thing just doesn´t get to me," Mr. Hylden said. "The Marines always got to me because they were all about honor and that sort of thing. That just really hits something inside of me every time I see it. I think, ´Man, I really want to go join the Marines and give something back to this country.´ "

But instead, he ended up enrolling at the University of Arkansas, where he recently finished his freshman year. "There´s this voice in my head that says, ´You should volunteer and give back to this country,´ " Mr. Hylden said. "But there´s this other voice in my head that says, ´What if you die?´ And it always wins out."

Doubts about the legitimacy of the war in Iraq after no weapons of mass destruction were found there makes the task even harder, said advertising executive Lenny Stern of the New York ad agency SS+K.

"The military perhaps has a challenge in trying to convince people that this is a mission worth going into the service for," said Mr. Stern, whose clients include Microsoft and Time Warner Cable.

Mr. Hylden´s friend Josh Hauberg, 19, a student at Collin County Community College, is a case in point. The "Army of One" advertisements "don´t do anything for me," he said, but the war in Iraq is the main reason he has no interest in military service.

Army recruiters show up at his school regularly and have called him at home. And his firefighter father "actually told me I probably should join," Mr. Hauberg said.

"I basically told them I don´t really feel that I need to go fight a war that I don´t believe in," the young man said.

Patricia Alvey, director of the Temerlin Advertising Institute at Southern Methodist University, said selling people soda pop is a lot different from persuading them to risk their lives in the military.

"You have to have a reason to want to give that much away," she said. "When it is not a time of war, the Army can be an adventure, it can be a way to get an education, it can be a way to see the world. At a time of war, you can´t have the same conversation."

Stephen Greyser, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, agreed that "one has to have a special kind of advertising to attract people to the prospect that they might actually die in combat."

Judging the effectiveness of the Army´s current advertising campaigns, created by the Leo Burnett USA agency of Chicago, is impossible without detailed research, Mr. Greyser said, and "it´s not easy to judge even if one had all the numbers."

But if not for advertising, he mused, "Maybe they´d be further behind their goals."