COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Personnel Crunch
Army Recruiters On a New Mission
Joan Voight, AD Week
November 26, 2007
San Francisco - If you think your marketing challenges are tough, put
yourself in the Army's boots. Faced with the difficulty of recruiting
young people to join the military during a controversial war and amid
daily reports of American deaths in Iraq, the U.S. Army has added a
new tool to its arsenal: experiential marketing. And its strategy
provides lessons for marketers of all stripes.
Since February 2007, the Army has gone on the road with the Virtual
Army Experience, which includes a simulated combat mission using
digital technology, real-life equipment and Army personnel. At places
such as amusement parks, air shows, hot rod races and tech
conferences nationwide, people have stood in line for up to two hours
to climb inside Humvees, hoist realistic-looking guns and shoot at
images of terrorists on giant video screens.
The simulation is essentially a giant, "real-life" version of the
Army's successful, five-year-old "America's Army" video-game series,
also used as a recruitment tool. (The multiplayer game puts people
through basic training and combat.) But the Army's experiential
marketing exhibit also gathers personal information about each
participant and uses it to customize each recruitment pitch during
the simulations.
The target audience is 17-24-year-old males, but boys and girls as
young as 14, as well as older adults, are welcome. (Anyone younger
than 15 must be accompanied by an adult.) More than 73,000
participants have gone through the VAE tour since it began; of those,
about 7,000 have been deemed Army material and have been courted by
recruiters a good ratio of total participants to prospective
recruits, according to an Army rep, who declines to say how many of
those have enlisted. (Due to the holiday season, the program has been
on hiatus since mid-November and picks up again in late January.)
The experience "is fun and interactive ... while effectively telling
a brand story of teamwork, honor and respect," says Drew Neisser, CEO
of Renegade, an experiential marketing agency. "Commercial clients
should try to replicate this model ... which gives users a realistic
view of what the brand is about."
Experience marketing is typically used to enhance consumers'
engagement with a brand. In a survey of marketing professionals by
the Experiential Marketing Forum and Clickin Research in September,
83 percent of respondents said engagement issues such as building
relationships and fostering trust were the goals. But the Army also
needs to quickly identify top "sales" prospects and push participants
into making a major life commitment.
"The program is very results oriented, there's no fuzzy math here, "
says Eric Johnson, president of Ignited, the marketing agency that
helped the Army develop the VAE.
As the need for recruits grew with the war in Iraq, the Army had
little time to test and research its plans. In 2005, when it showed
its training simulation at government trade shows, the Army was
surprised by the number of attendees who wanted to try it just for
fun. From there came the idea that the training tool could be used
for recruitment. Research showed that the target audience also would
enjoy seeing and trying actual Army equipment.
"There was an urgency to bring it to market," says Johnson. "We
fast-tracked the research phase and adopted a philosophy that we
would test, improve and adapt" the program after it launched.
When participants show up, they fill out an online questionnaire,
play the Army's video game and are issued badges with a tracking
device that stores the answers from the questionnaire and monitors
their movements (e.g., which attractions seem to get their
attention). They then see a video of soldiers briefing them on a
mission to raid a terrorist stronghold.
Next, the visitors, in groups of 40, get into Humvees facing large
screens. There they shoot fake guns at enemy figures and vehicles in
the simulated raid. The vehicles shake and rock realistically, and
the guns produce kickback. Soldiers then evaluate participants on
their shooting and teamwork, show a video about Army heroes and
introduce participants to one of the heroes in person. Visitors leave
with a video game and prospects are contacted later by recruiters.
Each visit lasts about 20 minutes.
Surveys taken by VAE organizers before and after the experience show
some propensity shifts. Before each the event, 33 percent of
attendees said "the Army is a job opportunity for me." Afterward, it
bumped up to 41 percent. About 22 percent of attendees agreed "the
Army is a choice for those with no other options" before the
experience; afterwards, only 11 percent agreed.
The Army's use of storytelling, virtual-reality techniques and
tracking technology is a potent combination that commercial marketers
could learn from, say experts, especially those marketers who target
young adults.
The event sells "the dream" of being part of an adventure and a team,
says Erik Hauser, founder of Swivel Media. "The challenge for the
Army, he adds, "is to shine a light on the part of the Army
experience that sells. Strategically speaking, it's very smart."
So far, the Army has learned a variety of lessons, mostly about what
works and, in a few cases, what needs to work better. These include:
1. A fully immersive environment overcomes past conditioning and
brand biases. According to VAE project director Colonel Casey
Wardynski, the "outside" world has too much "legacy information" that
is inaccurate from pop culture, the media and veterans of the Korean
and Vietnam Wars. "It's vital that we define what combat looks like
and not let it be portrayed by others," he notes.
Captain Ryan Hansen, Ignited's account director on the
project redeployed this fall, he's currently a Special Forces officer
in Iraq says, "The VAE was an opportunity to show [the outside world]
something compatible with my experience. It's important that it's realistic."
2. Storytelling keeps the target's attention.
"The key point is that the visitor is [an] action hero at the center
of this story," says Bob Rogers, CEO of BRC, Imagination Arts, an
experiential marketing and design firm. Also, he says, the Army
experience has a solid unifying story: Participants, he says, think,
"We've located a bad guy, we make a plan, things don't go perfectly,
it is harder than we thought, but we work as a team, we capture the
bad guy and we get home safely. We are congratulated [by our military
bosses] and are told we have aptitude for this important work."
3. Offer a free entertainment experience in exchange for personal information.
"We offer an entertaining, high-impact experience that might cost you
$100, and in exchange we want to know about you," says Wardynski. And
questions are kept fluid. Recently, one about favorite recreational
activities was nixed and information about tuition assistance was
added due to interest in college costs.
4. Use the personal information to customize an on-site pitch.
The tracking devices give information to handheld devices used by
soldiers at the exhibit, so they know how best to pitch the Army's
benefits. "If someone is there with his or her friends, then the
soldiers talk about how people can go into training with their
buddies," says Wardynski. "If a prospect indicates ... he came with
his mother and she wants him to go to college, the ... presentation
[addresses] that."
5. The best way to promote an event is to use the event itself.
To drum up interest in the road show, the Army uses national TV,
print and Web ads as well as local radio and billboards. But
Wardynski says visitors have said the ads were not all that
influential, but that the sights and sounds of the exhibit itself
convinced them to give it a try. "We also learned that a line makes a
line," he says. "When people see others standing in line, it prompts
them to check out the event."
As a result, midway through the road show the Army added a Jumbotron
screen outside the entrance and next year it's adding robotics and
interactive kiosks outside the exhibit.
Industry experts say a high-end road show lasting several months
costs about $5 million. Wardynski says the VAE's cost per visitor is
about $110. With about 73,000 visitors so far, that puts the VAE
budget at about $8 million. Wardynski also says about 10 percent of
visitors are promising candidates for enlistment, making the price
tag about $1,000 per prospect. Currently the Army spends about
$18,000 per recruit, he says. That includes ads, direct mail
campaigns and recruiter salaries, making the VAE a relative bargain.
He claims the Army does not have figures on how many people who have
enlisted since February have participated in the VAE.
Wardynski, who is also director of the Army's office of economic and
manpower analysis at the West Point Military Academy, adds that the
Army's virtual experience road show was considered a "one-off"
initiative when it started, but that the project's results have
changed the military service's philosophy about recruitment.
"Everything else the Army is doing will be designed to [match] this
program" he says, and will be based on "activating the interests" of
potential recruits and on "tangible actions and results."
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