COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: General
Military recruiting ads zero in on mom, dad
Parents, many of whom never served, are told of benefits
Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
October 16, 2005
With public support for the Iraq war dropping and military recruits becoming harder to attract, the Pentagon started an ad campaign Monday that skips patriotic images and focuses on the difficult conversations that young people have with their parents about joining up.The $10 million campaign by the military's marketing arm urges parents to "make it a two-way conversation" with children looking to join the military. In four 30-second spots on cable networks and in print ads in publications ranging from O, The Oprah Magazine to Field and Stream, the appeals urge parents -- many of whom, the Pentagon realizes, have never served in the military -- to learn more about the services.
Military officials say the ads aren't a response to falling poll numbers and emphasize that they have long tried to connect with people the Pentagon calls influencers -- parents, coaches, teachers and other adults who affect a potential recruit's life.
However, in contrast to past campaigns, the new ads focus less on a patriotic call to military service ("Uncle Sam Wants You") and opportunities for self-advancement ("Be all you can be"). The military's market surveys told them that families wanted a different reason for their children to join.
"Patriotism resonates with everybody," said Air Force Maj. Rene Stockwell, chief of joint advertisements for the Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies, which helped produce the advertisements. "But just because it resonates with someone doesn't mean that they'll recommend military service."
The ads are being released at a time when peace activists are trying to limit the military's access to potential recruits in public schools. One such activist, Gail Sredanovic of the group Raging Grannies, said the new campaign glosses over the disadvantages of serving in the military, especially during a war.
"If you want information about a car, you don't ask the used car dealer," said Sredanovic, who lives in Menlo Park. "You ask Consumer Reports."
In all of the four TV commercials released Monday, the camera takes the point of view of the parents. Shot in the no-frills style of a public service announcement, each ad features a teenage boy or girl looking directly into the camera and pleading the case for joining the military.
The parents are silent, their gaze occasionally wandering to a child's bicycle in the yard, or to their hands fumbling nervously with a salt shaker, or to people gathering on a street corner. Stockwell said this was meant to convey the awkwardness of the conversations.
"Mom, you know how I love being on the water, right? How I love the environment?" a young man asks his mother as they talk on their back porch. "I can be part of an environmental response team working on oil cleanups and stuff. I'm serious about this.
"So what do you think?" the young man asks. A voice-over urges parents to "make it a two-way conversation" and points them to the military's Web site www.todaysmilitary.com.
The site, Stockwell said, is aimed at a generation of parents who "aren't as likely to have served in the military and don't have that firsthand knowledge." The site is designed to supply that knowledge with sections like, "Myths vs. Reality."
Another spot begins with a mother scanning a kitchen table covered with bills and calculator as her daughter tells her that she wants to join as a way to gain experience for medical school. "It will be good for my career," the daughter says.
In another, a young man is working on a car in front of a home.
"C'mon, Dad," he says into the camera, "You always said, 'Finish what you start.' " The son says he already has discipline and determination -- "I need a place where they can come out, where they matter.
"Dad," the son says, "talk to me."
As advertising, the spots are "quite powerful and emotional," said Betsy DePalma Sperry, managing director of Grey San Francisco, an advertising firm.
But Sperry said the ads skirt the issue that would worry a parent most -- the possibility their son or daughter will die in combat.
"I think there's a need, therefore, to call a spade a spade: You're going in to serve a higher calling at great risk," Sperry wrote in an e-mail. "I know this would recall earlier messaging of patriotism, which may not play to current audiences, but I question whether any such conversation -- informed or otherwise -- could address the main barriers (to recruiting)."
The military is slightly behind its active duty recruiting goals for the year, October statistics from the Department of Defense show. Four of the military's six reserve components are behind their targets.
Polls show that some parents have their doubts about the military, too. A survey of 1,500 adults this month by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 44 percent felt that the United States made the right decision in using military force against Iraq, compared with 51 percent who felt that way in January.
Brian Hurley, a partner with the San Francisco advertising firm Grant, Scott & Hurley, said the ads were honest in that they "there are so many people between 18 and 24 in the U.S. for whom life is bleak enough that the military seems a good option. Or, as these ads imply, the only option."
But Hurley said they made him wonder whether the "military, like our government in general, is in such sorry shape that thoughtful, well-intentioned people have thrown up their hands and said, 'We can't show people jumping out of planes or helicopters anymore, we can't tell them about the great training they'll get, or how people the world over will admire them.' We have to be plain and honest that today's military is at least a choice."
Although the ads may not contain patriotic images or "I want you!" calls to service, the military's core values such as discipline, determination and commitment are conveyed in the dialogue, said David Swaebe, a spokesman for Mullen, the Boston-area ad firm that created the campaign for the military.
Megan Matson, an organizer with San Francisco-based Leave My Child Alone, which focuses on controlling the release of student information to military recruiters, found the ads encouraging in that the military "has spent all this money on focus groups, and they're recognizing that they need to take a different tack."
"The focus groups must have shown that no one over 19 is falling for the glitz anymore (Army rodeo teams, babes on humvees, the adventure of it all, etc.) and they had better look real, and look like they care," Matson wrote in a separate e-mail. The Bolinas resident is a former creative director at a New York advertising agency.
One military historian said advertising campaigns can only do so much.
"I don't think it's going to work as long as there's a war still going on," said Larry Suid, a military historian and co-author of "Stars & Stripes on Screen: A Comprehensive Guide to Portrayals of American Military on Film." "They're trying to market at a time when the market isn't that good."
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
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