Marketing and myths hurt recruiting efforts
Stars & Stripes reports that the Department of Defense is worried about the “myths” and misconceptions that younger Americans have about military service which are hurting recruiting efforts.
For example, 63 percent of youth ages 16 to 24 believe it is “likely” or “very likely” that a person leaving the military today has psychological or emotional problems. “They hear about post-traumatic stress disorder and all the challenges faced by service men and women post-conflict, and believe that’s indicative of the vast majority of individuals who serve,” Hebert said.
The same survey found 61 percent of youth believe it likely or very likely someone getting out of service today will have difficulty readjusting to everyday life. Forty-eight percent believe it is likely or very likely that a person departing the military has a physical injury.
Absent any other information, Hebert said, the public has no way to put in context the many ads they see soliciting donations to support injured veterans.
DoD complains that money which went towards their marketing efforts is now spent on training and real world operations because of sequestration, the use by the previous administration to cut government spending on the back of national security.
During the OIF and OEF missions, the Pentagon reached out to military bloggers to overcome the negative information, a cost effective solution. When the wars wound down, so did their outreach.
Many milbloggers folded their tents and went to social media to reach a more friendly audience. In my opinion, they missed an opportunity. The veteran-free outlets like “Task and Purpose” and “Popular Military” filled the gap, mostly just perpetuating the misconceptions with “click bait” National Enquirer-type stories.
The New York Times is bringing back their “At War” column, the Washington Post has begun hiring real veterans to their regular staff, but the DoD is still cash-starved and doesn’t have an operations to feed milbloggers with the words to get the Pentagon’s message out to them.
At the last Milblog Conference, some representatives of the New York Times and the Washington Post told the assemblage that the media didn’t need milbloggers to explain to them the realities of war like they did in the early years of the war, and it seems that many milbloggers took that as gospel and left the business, but obviously we need them back as much as we needed them during the early war years.
Category: Big Pentagon, Bloggers
And dickweeds like Salcedo, et al, aren’t helping.
I pray Jonn never leaves the business, This place is a God send! Jonn and all my friends here at TAH have given me so much in return. I don’t know what I would do without all of you here!! You folks have saved my sanity and I can’t do without you!
Prop up programs like ROTC. Open house days at military installations. Air shows. And how about some ground shows with armor?
Push the education angle with real world examples of veterans that have parlayed their service into civilian careers. Open up the high schools to meet and greet events.
Oh, and don’t start no wars.
26L
Between Cadet Command Recruiting Command and the marketing and Engagement Brigade I work for we do all of the above…except for the war thingy…we have no control over that.
We work with local recruiting offices as well as their battalion and brigade higher commands to provide displays, and other types vehicles trucks etc at every event we can support.
We’re up against what these kids see in the media…on social media…in their schools etc that tell them don’t join.
Keep up the good work.
What they see up close and personal holds far more weight than media.
I recall the Army Guard landing a UH-1 on the playground of a local elementary school about ten years ago and taking the kids for short rides. I lived down the road and the sight of those kids waving each time they went by was a real treat. They would be of enlistment age today.
yet, we successfully recruited about 135K enlisted and 3k officers last year.
They are coming from somewhere….
“At the last Milblog Conference, some representatives of the New York Times and the Washington Post told the assemblage that the media didn’t need milbloggers to explain to them the realities of war…”
Because they have their own narrative that they want to push unencumbered by truth, reality or objectivity
Yeah, at the Washington Post, the vets they hired to write for them took to Trump-bashing with a veteran’s voice. I had to unfriend them on Facebook because it got so bad.
How’d that whole C.J Grisham lovefest work for you, Jonn?
As I see it, the Pentagon can blame themselves for years of soft, cozy military ads, inviting young people to see the world, get a free or assisted college education, and so forth. Sure, a small percentage of military see actual combat, but the reality is that the military exists to do battle. The flip side is that the host of psychological and physical problems–including death–incurred by our fighters are things many good hearted people would like to alleviate, in some fashion. The Marines have done the best job at telling the truth, in my view. Want pansies and trannies and Lord knows what else in our military? Well, you got it. Another thing. Warch the medicine and medical ads on TV. By the time the side effects are listed, as required by law, who wants anything to do with the product? Sucks, but it’s the truth. The Pentagonals might try it.
Here is General Forrest recruiting ad….
200 Recruits Wanted
I will receive 200 able bodied men if they will present themselves
at my headquarters by the first of June with good horses and guns.
I wish none but those who desire to be actively engaged. My headquarters
for the present is at Corinth, Mississippi.
COME ON BOYS, IF YOU WANT A HEAP OF FUN AND TO KILL SOME YANKEES
N.B. Forrest
Commanding Forest’s Regiment
This ad ran in the Memphis Appeal in May 1862.
Crazy how many units were built like that, often equipped by their organizer out of their own pockets. Can you imagine the lefties if someone tried to raise an infantry regiment of volunteers today?
Look at what the lefties did to Executive Outcomes with the help of the UN, after Executive Outcomes had single handedly won the war for the government against the guerrillas in both Angola and Sierra Leone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes
Obama didn’t stop using PMCs, and I don’t recall the left crying too much about that.
Who did he fight?
Abner Doubleday?
He and his killed a great many Yankees at the Battles of Shiloh, Chickamauga, Brice’s Crossroads and Second Franklin.
I teach Army JROTC. We are at all sorts events in this town. About one third of my cadets end up in the military. More would like to but can not meet the standards for entry. I am constantly correcting misconceptions about service.
I’d be curious to know the origin of the S&S story. Tom Philpott is evidently a contributor and not an S&S staffer. I mention this because the copy seems weighted with both marketing buzzwords and an over-reliance on survey results. It’s been my experience that people involved in market research, the honest ones, will tell you there are a large number of variables involved in surveys. Whatever results you’re getting need to be interpreted, and not acted upon as hard data points. Too, it tends to be the case that trying to compare survey results over time is usually a fool’s errand. Something else going on with this stuff is that Lernes Hebert makes an apparent mistake in talking about building a “brand” for each of the military services. The fact is that such brands already exist. The main task shouldn’t be to try to create a new brand out of whole cloth, it should be to evolve and improve the existing brand. Service in the military is not the same as working for any other entity. And I wonder about “influencers” who might have no clue that’s the case. Earlier this week, for example, we had the school teacher Gregory Salcido who was born, went to college, and ended up no more than about 20 miles from where he started. He’s one of the many who opted to stay behind when some of the rest of us decided see how things happen in unfamiliar places. I remember an afternoon flying out of Yokota Air Base. Out the starboard side of the aircraft, there was a jaw-dropping sunset going down behind a snow-capped Mount Fujiyama. It was the kind of thing people in the military are exposed to with a fair degree of regularity. Such a sight might not mean much to the Gregory Salcido’s of the world, who find solace in a safe and comfortable classroom. But it meant something to me, and I can remember it down a long slope of years. I can also chalk it up to, in the words of Jack London, not wasting my… Read more »
I remember seeing Mt Fuji out of the side window of a C12 (if I remember correctly). It was as pictured, perfectly symmetrical, snow capped peak. Utterly worth the flight.
The kind of things to warm the soul in your old age, the “been there, done that”, that most civilians will never know.
Damn! Been retired 20 years now, I still miss The Life.
Deplorable: Retired 26 years and it seems like it was yesterday I heard my first metal shitcan being kicked down the aisle at boot in Orlando, FL. I’d go back in a New York Minute but at my age and size my only usefulness would be to cast shade for the real troops. As Mrs. HMC Retired will remind me when we reminisce, you haven’t lived until you’ve gone coast to coast on a piece of toast. Aaaah, the good ‘ol days.
Based on the truth around piss poor VA treatment perhaps it’s not only “myths” that hurt recruiting.
I’ve commented about this before, but this is just another example of what has been called “The Great Divorce” that I think I first read about some time in the 1980s: The widening gap between the people who serve in the armed forces and the rest of society.
I found this article from 2008 about the phenomenon:
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/great-divide
Of course, with regard to something that “hurts” recruiting, what about the fact that the military seems to be in a constant “boom or bust” cycle?
Either the military is hurting so bad for people that they’ll take anyone, even if they have mental illness or felony convictions (like during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) or the military is so full of dead wood that they’re kicking people to the curb without so much as a handshake for missing tape or failing a PT test.
Who in his/her right mind would want to join an organization that treats its people like that?
This is a spot on observation to me, idiots like Chandler who needed door kickers changing the rules on below the knee and elbow tattoos after he doesn’t need them anymore.
In today’s social media environment a potential recruit doesn’t have to look far to see dozens of Facebook pages of recent vets talking about how the military fucked them…with today’s youth social media has an impact.
The idea that the military can change its end of the deal without your approval doesn’t sit well with this current group of young people who require more information, more input and think they deserve full respect before they’ve even done anything is not a generation inclined to suffer what they perceive as injustice when there is no requirement that they do so.
That 1% serving might get even smaller over the next twenty years.
“a potential recruit doesn’t have to look far to see dozens of Facebook pages of recent vets talking about how the military fucked them”
Anyone here remember “National Call to Service”? A horrible bill of goods was sold to prospective Corpsmen nationwide and created a large population of angry disillusioned combat veterans. Most of those guys didn’t have a concept of what a raw deal they were getting until after they were on active duty. On paper it seemed legit, in practice it was a nightmare moral killer.
It was so bad everyone would apologize to those boys when they found out that was how they enlisted.
The NAVMED’s MAP program was not very good also. Both MAP and NCS in my opinion, were systems put in place to save the Navy money while keeping manning numbers up, at the expense of junior enlisted. So while 03 types were getting 50k to reenlist, 8404’s got churned and burned, in then out of those same units, getting nothing for reenlisting because the Navy has “plenty” of 8404’s on the books.
MAP and NCS are both the worst kind of shell game.
Apparently no one cares. My guess is that the population of infantry 8404’s at any time is about 2K maximum. If you can dilute that number with everyone who has the NEC then you never have to reward war fighters. Fleet Navy can also marginalize you because others in your rate did similar. It’s disgusting, and those NCS guys? They did a combat pump and were immediately removed to the reserves. Because that’s what you do with combat vets right? You fuck them off on principle.
An example of almost every bad practice revisited on the Hospital Corps. Why? Because they can.
Martin: Boom and bust cycles also occur in private enterprise and these are the risks one takes in choosing a career or job. Being in a bust cycle forces one to grasp this reality. The military offers a lot of training that translates into a good job as evidenced by veteran statistics. One may be caught in a military bust cycle, but this can also open avenues for those who have the discipline and gumption to pursue the opportunities in the private sector. The gumption and discipline likely arose in the individual via the military. Education and training are always basic keys to a successful life. The education and training provided by the military is free. The individual’s time spent in the military is his/her cost but the time would be needed anyway to get an education and training in the private sector. So yeah, there are good reasons to join the military for someone who is smart but doesn’t have a lot of resources to pay for an education.
The barrage of veteran charities/solicitations, the military’s lack of blog outreach and let us not forget the VA’s contribution to the myths. With everything they publish, the VA highly supports the memes of 22/day suicides, 50,000 homeless, and rampant PTSD. Bureaucratic creep turned into a flood via the VA’s support of these memes.
The 22/day meme was built on family self-reported data. The 50,000 homeless is built on the homeless self-reporting as being veterans. The PTSD meme is built on VA reporting. We all are aware of the rampant abuse of PTSD issue which the VA refuses to address. There has been no effort by the VA to confirm, via DD214s, the validity of the claims supporting these memes.
Naturally the anti-military media uses the deeply flawed VA reports to insidiously denigrate veterans. When this is all a 17 year old hears…
I believe my case is no exception. Coming out of high school, I was a lost soul with no direction. The Navy/Marines and combat put my head on straight. My service gave me the opportunity to get a college education which I parlayed into a good paying and fun career. This is another message the military should use in their arsenal of selling the military.
Additionally, the military should exploit the demographic statistics that show veterans do better than their peers in the long run. Young men and women coming out of high school can be fearful for their future, but they are not dumb. Seeing a pathway that improves their odds for a successful future could be a powerful message.
The 50,000 homeless is a myth. Pollsters in my region were traveling the area, approaching the corner sign holders looking for handouts. Whether their sign read “homeless vet needs help” or not they asked all if they were veterans, how long they had been homeless and thus and so on. No questions for validity such as, when did you serve, what unit, etc. Based upon their answers they forwarded their results to the local media and according tot he article published, the VA as well. They also hit all the local Mission shelters with the same stuff. The results were close to 80% saying yes they were veterans. Without any need for verification, how many of these would claim veteran status based on the added possibility of more handouts. I was sickened to say he least and commented my concerns to the local ass wipe’s Facebook story.
Sparks: Exactly! I appreciate you fleshing out my remarks on the subject.
aGrimm, my path to the Marine Corps reads similar to yours and probably a lot of the others that enlisted in the mid ’60 s. I went straight to collage from high school. By midyear I had decided I was in the wrong major and decided to enlist before the draft board found me. Joined the Marines, ended up auditing for band duty during classification testing. I ended up in the band at Parris Island for OJT as trumpet player. After 4yrs in the band fields I test for a transfer to the computer field, got the OK for the transfer, reenlisted for the school and spent the next 16 yrs. As computer programmer. After retirement I landed a civilian job in the IT field. I stayed there for 20 yrs. and when I retired from that job, my salary was close to $100,000.
All based on a high school education and some college training and my Marine Corps experience.
MSGT Richard Deiters USMC(Retired): you and I are precisely the examples of why military service can be the gateway to a good life as I am sure it is true for so many at TAH. This needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
Semper Fi from an adopted (Doc) Marine.
Navy? Marine? Navy? Marine? I don’t know but at least I’m not Army. 🙂
Whoa, whoa. There is nothing wrong with the Army.
At least I am infantry.
Pfffftttt…..I was Army, Signal Corps.
“You can talk about us, but you can’t talk without us”.
“Without us, all you got are 60 ton rolling paperweights”.
Signal Corps, first to go, last to know! 24 years as a 26Q/31Q/31M/31R/31W/25W
11B was one of my THREE MOS’s.
Be all that you can be.
We do more before breakfast than most people do by 9AM.
Join the Navy. See the World.
Gee, I wish I were a man. I’d join the Navy.
Those ad campaigns were short and to the point. Nothing hard to understand about them.
Stop doing surveys and start promoting your product.
Ex-PH2: My bride of 46 years and I are glad you are not a man. You always tickle us with your female perspective on TAH’s various subjects. Thanks.
PS: had to get the 46 years in as it is something I value far more than my military service. We were engaged when I went AD and to Nam. Her support (cookies from home is a good way to a man’s heart) convinced me that I found a good woman. Nothing has changed in the intervening years.
aGrimm: Me and Mrs. HMC also have 46 years. We met at a school at Navy Hospital San Diego. She was in the Army, me the Navy. As I’ve said before, she is the best thing to have happened to me. I’ve also mentioned before that when we reminisce, she reminds me of the fun times when we went coast to coast on a piece of toast. Can’t imagine a life w/o her by my side. She pulled me out of the gutter on more than one occasion.
There are risks to every job. Suck it up snowflakes ❄
RCAF: Teaching radiation risk, I had a long chart of relative risk factors. The #1 relative risk was being a male between the ages of 18-25. I would ask the female students if this was due to males in this age group being just plain stupid. Always got loud affirmatives – plus sheepish grins from the males. Heh.
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I believe it was the Marines who once used the best ever one-liner — “We’ve been waiting for you…” — as the wrap to a set of recruiting videos. That challenging invitation leaves ad agency boilerplate in the dust. Well-done to whoever came up with it.
Milbloggers?
How’d that work for you last time you got deep with one, Jonn?
Chesty, how about you stop the tap dancing bullshit, sack up and speak your mind? You seem to have a hardon for TAH and Jonn. Use your words, junior.
But reasoned arguments are hard, vitriol and asshollery are much easier.
The number of recruitment-age kids living in a home with a veteran has been shrinking steadily.
The lack of someone in the home who can talk intelligently about being in the service, combined with all of the “22 a day,” homeless vets, and wounded warrior imagery is a perfect storm in terms of kids being leery of serving.
By the time I was 16, I was sure that if my two goofy parents could cut it in the military for a few years, there was no question that I could too.
Speaking for myself,while I was accepted to college, I didn’t want to burden my parents or myself with college loans. And since the Navy was offering all kinds of money since I qualified to be a Nuc I said sure thing! Did 20 years and when I retired in 05 plenty of companies were offering big money for the skills I had.
Good timing on this topic. I just read that the USMC will air a Super Bowl ad that will show “Marines deploying off ships in amphibious vehicles, dropping bombs from aircraft and hurling a shoulder-launched drone into the air….” No squishy stuff. No pics mimicking a ‘little UN’ or LGBTXYZ rally. Just some simulated combat scenes. I like it.
Is there an acceptable cross section of race, gender etc. and the ranks they hold?
Just playing devils advocate.
It’s also being reported that the ad will only appear online. Makes sense if your demographic is those who watch TV online.
Ah, it looks like Tom Ricks can’t keep a stable job/position. He left Foreign Policy and has settled into “Task & Purpose” for some reason.
The media LOVES stories about disfuctional vets and soldiers coming back from war “broken”. IAVA and VoteVets don’t have the pull (if any) they used to, but if the media can’t find someone to support THE NARRATIVE(tm) they will invent them.