Selling Brand USA

A wiry-framed teenage boy walks up to a table in the Hauppauge (NY) High School lunch room, and asks Lt. Col. John W. Gillette of the U.S. Army if he could have one of the promotional CD wallets being given away to students.

The officer agrees, but the boy has to drop and give him 20 first. And as he does his pushups, Arena Football League players Kevin Swayne and Chris Boden of the New York Dragons look on, making sure the teenager keeps his back straight.

The players and Gillette, along with about a half a dozen other soldiers from the U.S. Army’s New York City Recruiting Battalion, were visiting the school and attending gym classes. It was part of the pilot AFL-U.S. Army Boot Camp program, handled by Chicago-based Relay Sports and Entertainment, which focuses on teamwork, fitness and exercise education, and was also conducted at high schools in the Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Tampa markets.

It is also a sign of changing times for the U.S. military, which has revamped its marketing and promotions strategies drastically since the late 1990s to try to meet its recruiting goals.

“When I was 21, I just walked into a recruiting office and said I wanted to sign up,” says Staff Sgt. Benjamin D. Patti of the U.S. Army. “Now the Army is much more interactive with kids to sell itself as a career and a future.”

Call it the new military-marketing complex. The government has beefed up the Department of Defense’s recruiting marketing funding, nearly doubling it since the late 1990s. The DOD’s recruiting marketing funding was $298.9 million in fiscal year ending June 30, 1998, reached $608.7 million in fiscal year 2002 and dropped slightly to $591.8 million in fiscal year 2003.

New agencies and contractors were brought in, and long-time slogans such as the Army’s “Be All You Can Be” were abandoned in favor of campaigns designed to better suit Generation Y. Military branches now hit the road, wooing potential recruits with concerts, pro and college sports, adventure sports and auto racing.

According to published reports, the Army has the largest annual marketing budget (which includes advertising) at $212 million per year. DOD says Campbell-Ewald, Warren, MI, signed an incentive-based contract with the Navy with a value of up to $330 million. It was an initial contract for two months, followed by five one-year options.

The Air Force’s marketing budget jumped from $18.3 million in 1998 to $90.5 million in 2003 because of its television advertising campaign, according to a report from the General Accounting Office, which also reports a 2003 marketing budget of $46.5 million for the Marines.

“Working on a military account is attractive because unlike the private sector, where there are going to be ups and downs, the military is recession-proof,” says Ahmad Islam, who worked for Army AOR Leo Burnett, Chicago, for four years and is now a partner of Chicago-based Common Ground Marketing. “There are a number of chances for small and large agencies to get involved as subcontractors” with the branches’ AORs.

Islam says the goal of the military’s marketing strategy is to understand the interest of the consumer, put the message in front of the 18-24 demographic, and reach out and touch the potential prospects.

It’s a far cry from the days when recruiters from each branch sat sternly at a table in high school cafeterias and waited for students to approach them. Now, each of the military’s branches uses sports and entertainment in interactive ways to spread the word about their product — a career in the armed forces.

“The main idea for us is just to associate the U.S. Navy with a student’s lifestyle,” says David Issacs, CEO of New York-based Zilos Networks, which handles the 2004 College Music Awards concert tour, presented by the U.S. Navy. Yellowcard, Taking back Sunday and Something Corporate headline the 10-campus tour. “It’s our way of integrating the Navy into the college music scene in a way that doesn’t make the Navy look imposing. The concept is to get kids interacting with Naval recruiters.”

A trivia contest — The Rock-it Science challenge — is held at each concert. The first of three chosen students who gets 10 music-related questions correct wins backstage access and a chance to meet the bands. Concert-goers have a say in who wins the College Music Awards by voting online after the show or inside the venues via text-messaging.

The Navy has also been a sponsor of the ESPN’s X-Games and the National Basketball Association’s Rhythm & Rims, a customized 18-wheeler which transforms into a 30,000 square-foot basketball theme park featuring a concert stage, two basketball courts and a wide variety of contests and basketball activities.

In addition, it has an athletics award program with the NCAA’s South West Athletic Conference, which is made up of historically black universities. GlobalHue, Southfield, MI, handles.

The Army is also the title sponsor of the annual All-American Bowl, which is handled by Sportslink, Hackettstown, NJ, and features the country’s top high school football players. The Army sends representatives to each of the players’ high schools, awards him his game jersey in a school assembly, and interacts with potential recruits. The game is held in San Antonio, and includes a week of festivities.

The Army is also the exclusive military partner of the Professional Bull Riders and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. They also have a state-of-the-art mobile interactive college tour. In addition to a 24-foot climbing wall, the display includes a motion simulator ride, a 9-foot by 10-foot video wall displaying Army film footage, and a 3D “Soldiers of the Future” interactive exhibit.

And the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Army National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard (which is actually under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Transportation) all have sponsorship ties with NASCAR.

Though the Army and National Guard are the only military branches that compete in NASCAR’s highest series, the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup, they all bring their mobile tours to the tracks on race weekend.

All the branches have also made their Web sites interactive, allowing prospective recruits to talk live with recruiters and participate in message boards.

But is the additional interaction and exposure helping the military reach its recruiting goals? According to published reports, the National Guard reached 88% of its one-year goal of 56,000 recruits by the end of September, signing up 49,210. For the first 30 days of fiscal year 2005, Army recruiters were 30% of its goal of signing up 7,247 recruits.

The Navy, in October, reported that it reached its annual target of 39,600 recruits by 77 sailors.

Barbara Hays, a senior VP with Campbell-Ewald, said metrics are very important to the Navy, but acknowledges that it may take two or three attempts after an event to turn a prospect into a sailor. At mobile events, prospects fill out business reply cards so recruiters can continue their dialogue. On-the-spot enlistment only happens at a few of the Navy’s events.

“Obviously people aren’t going to sign on the dotted line at an event,” Hays says. “But we can tell if there’s a spike in online after an activity after certain events.”

Recruiting Advertising Funding