Marine Corps looking for a few good MySpace buddies

[fontman]

Marine Corps looking for a few good MySpace buddies
By Audrey McAvoy
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:12 a.m. July 24, 2006

KANEOHE, Hawaii - Teens looking to hook up with a friend on the popular Web community MySpace may bump into an unexpected buddy: the U.S. Marine Corps.

So far, over 12,000 Web surfers have signed on as friends of the Corps in response to the latest military recruiting tactic. Other military branches may follow.

MySpace.Com, the Internet's most popular social networking site with over 94 million registered users, has helped redefine the way a generation communicates. Users, many in their teens and 20s, post personal profiles and accumulate lists of friends and contacts with common interests.

The Marine Corps MySpace profile - featuring streaming video of barking drill sergeants, fresh recruits enduring boot camp and Marines storming beaches - underscores the growing importance of the Internet to advertisers as a medium for reaching America's youth.

"That's definitely the new wave," said Gunnery Sgt. Brian Lancioni at a Hawaii recruiting event. "Everything's technical with these kids, and the Internet is a great way to show what the Marine Corps has to offer."

Patrick Baldwin, an 18-year-old recruit from Saratoga, N.Y., who linked his profile to the Marines' site after hearing about it from a friend, said MySpace was a good place for interested teens to start learning more about the Marines.

"The more information you have the better off you are," said Baldwin, who left for boot camp a few weeks ago.

The Army, which originally balked at advertising on MySpace because of well-publicized incidents of child predators using the site to meet kids, plans to soon set up its own profile page.

"It is where prospects are," said Louise Eaton, media and Web chief for the U.S. Army Accession Command. "We go to where they are to try to inform them of the opportunities we offer."

Recruiters say MySpace is good for advertising, but they would never sign someone up to join the Marines unless they've met him or her in an old-fashioned, face-to-face meeting.

Web surfers who open the Marines' MySpace page can click on a tab titled "Contact a Recruiter." This directs them to the Marines.com site where they are prompted to fill out a form with their name, address and phone number so recruiters can arrange to meet them.

So far over 430 people have asked to contact a Marine recruiter through the site in the five months since the page went up, including some 170 who are considered "leads" or prospective Marine recruits.

The Marine Corps isn't the first to use MySpace profiles to reach the Web community's core audience of teenagers and twentysomethings.

Toyota Motor Corp. has a page to promote the Yaris, its new subcompact car. Verizon Wireless sponsored a contest on MySpace for the best single by an unsigned band.

MySpace has rapidly become the online social forum of choice for many who like how easy it is to make and communicate with friends via the site. But MySpace - and News Corp., its parent company - have had problems.

In Maine, a 27-year-old man was sentenced to three years in prison for sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl he met on the site.

To boost the site's safety, MySpace recently imposed restrictions on how adults may contact younger users. Those who are 18 and over can no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's list of friends unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name.

The Army initially posted ads on MySpace in January but withdrew them a month later when reports emerged about child predators approaching youths via the site. MySpace has since assured the Army it has better security protections in place.

As for other branches, the Air Force places regular advertisements on MySpace, but doesn't have a profile. The Navy hasn't used MySpace.

Steve Morse with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors is critical of recruiters using MySpace profiles. But Morse said they don't surprise him because the Iraq war has forced the military to search "under every bush" for recruits.

"It's kind of obnoxious of them to be using something that's sort of like a youth domain, to kind of come in and really sucker youth into something they're not really explaining fully," Morse said.

On the Net: Marines on MySpace: www.myspace.com/themarinecorps

[yellowwing]

MySpace USMC (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=73782684)

[thedrifter]

From The Halls Of MySpace To The Shores Of Facebook


The US Army raised some eyebrows a few years ago when it released its own video game in an attempt to turn gamers into new recruits. While the effectiveness of the move is debateable, it does show that the military has some understanding it's got to reach out to young people in new ways, in places and activities where they spend their time. It's hardly surprising, then, to see the Marines on MySpace, where its profile has attracted more than 12,000 friends. Plenty of advertisers have taken similar steps, getting users to buddy up to their brands in social-networking sites, so it's not as if this is uncharted territory. But just as questions remain about the effectiveness of advertising on social-networking sites, it's not clear just how well the MySpace recruiting is going for the Marines: despite attracting all those friends, just 430 people have contacted a recruiter through the site in 5 months, with just 170 of them considered prospective recruits.

Ellie

[Static_Sky25]

what you have to consider is that, the 170 that are considered Prospective recruits may never have been in contact with a recruiter prior to this.. it may not be the topdog on the recruitment front but it's still gonna pull some pups in

[fontman]

Marines Totally Want To Be Your MySpace Friend - And Recruit You
By Gil Kaufman
MTV Think News
07.25.2006 4:49 PM EDT

The Marines are always searching for a "few good men" (or women), but in their latest attempt to boost recruitment, the stone-faced few and proud just want to be your buddy. Specifically, your MySpace buddy.

Five months after its launch, the Marines have begun to see some solid results from their MySpace profile page, which, unlike the thousands of ones set up by bands that blast you with their music, opens with a video of Marine drill sergeants shouting orders at boot-camp recruits, who recite their credo while running through obstacle courses, shooting guns and practicing hand-to-hand combat amid images of waving American flags.

The site, which features a selection of downloadable Marine wallpaper, also has links to recruiters and, so far, boasts more than 13,000 friends with handles like Promiscuous, Leatherneck and Tha Rock.

The courting of the MySpace generation - the site now claims more than 96 million members - is a nod to the importance of tapping the potential of the Internet to reach America's wired youth, according to Major Wes Hayes, Marine Corps Recruiting Command spokesperson.

"The Marine Corps is always looking for new and innovative ways to make sure our target audience, young men and women ages 18 to 24, are informed about the Marines," said Hayes, adding that the reach into MySpace was not related to the kind of missed recruitment goals some branches of the armed services have experienced in the past few years (see "Army Recruitment Down For Fourth Consecutive Month"). "Our recruiting practices are the same during peacetime and wartime," Hayes said. "We are always very proactive and we do everything we can to meet or exceed our recruiting goals."

Given the string of highly publicized incidents involving child predators trolling MySpace to meet underage children, the Army pulled its banner ads from the site earlier this year, according to Louise Eaton, media and Web chief for the U.S. Army Accession Command. But the Army kept in touch with MySpace in the interim, and after the site recently issued new security guidelines and assured the Army that MySpace was more secure, the Army is prepping a return of the ads as well as a profile page. "The purpose [of the Army profile page] is to let young people know about the opportunities Army offers," Eaton said.

And why MySpace? "Because young people are there," she said. "We have to go to where young people are." The Air Force advertises on MySpace but doesn't have a profile page, and the Navy has no presence on the site at this point. The Army's profile page is being worked on now by its ad agency, and Eaton said it should be up soon.

Though Hayes said MySpace is a fine place to advertise and get the word out, the Marines would never sign someone up without meeting them in person, "knee-to-knee," first. The Marines MySpace page has a tab called "contact a recruiter" that takes you to the Marines.com Web site, which prompts the potential recruit to fill out a form that sets up a meeting with a recruiter.

Hayes said since its launch, the Marines profile has gotten 500 responses (meaning someone clicked over to the Marines.com page), with 200 panning out as "leads," or someone who is the right age and physically, mentally and educationally qualified for the service.

"The Internet is a very powerful tool and we see it as a new and innovative way to reach our target audience," Hayes said.

[rodolforguerra]

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