With Recruiting Goals Exceeded, Marines Toughen Their Ad Pitch

[thedrifter]

September 18, 2009
With Recruiting Goals Exceeded, Marines Toughen Their Ad Pitch
By JAMES DAO

Calvin Klein it’s not. The advertisement shows men crawling through mud and under barbed wire, being smacked in the head with padded fighting sticks, vomiting after inhaling tear gas and diving, boots and all, into a swimming pool.

If it sounds like a teaser for a survival reality show, that’s not far off the mark. On Saturday, the Marine Corps will unveil its newest advertising campaign, and unlike past campaigns featuring the Marines’ stately Silent Drill Platoon in dress uniform, the new spot highlights in high-definition detail the grit, sweat and tears of boot camp.

“It’s not soft,” said Maj. Gen. Robert E. Milstead Jr., who heads the Marine Corps Recruiting Command. “It’s not showing people in a nice uniform. It’s not showing all the good things. It’s in your face.”

The new approach is a result of recruiting successes, General Milstead said. Thanks in part to the weak economy, the corps is ahead of its recruiting goals not only for this year but for the next three as well. And so the high command has concluded that it can be pickier about new recruits.

“We’re going to toss a challenge,” General Milstead said. “And if you rise to the challenge, we’ll make you only one promise: we’ll make you a United States Marine. That resonates to young men and women.”

The corps is not the only service meeting its goals. As is typical when job markets are weak, all the services have been meeting or exceeding their targets, including the Army, which struggled just a few years ago when the economy was strong and the Iraq war was sending home large numbers of casualties.

General Milstead said that in 2008, the corps had its most bountiful recruiting year since 1984, bringing in about 42,000 new Marines. He also noted that the quality of recruits was higher: nearly 99 percent this year are high school graduates, up from 95 percent in 2007.

The bumper crop has been such that many new enlistees must now wait six months or more to get a spot in boot camp, and the corps has already met its five-year mission to expand by 27,000 Marines. Two years ago, when Congress authorized the corps, the smallest of the military services, to grow to 202,000 from 175,000, the leadership thought it could not reach the goal until 2012. Instead, it was reached this summer.

The new advertising campaign tries to capitalize on the Marines’ image, part reality and part burnished myth, as the toughest and most selective of the services. A 60-second spot shows three young men — one black, one Latino and one white — hearing a silent call, and then running toward the rigors of basic training, a drill instructor shouting, “Move it!”

The spot, which will first be televised during the Florida-Tennessee college football game on CBS this Saturday and during pro football games Sunday and then Monday night, was produced by JWT, the advertising agency that has long been a consultant to the corps. The director was Simon Crane, whose film credits include helping direct the Normandy beach scene in “Saving Private Ryan.”

Shot on location mostly at Parris Island, S.C., the corps’s East Coast training station, the spot shows real Marines doing real basic training exercises, although actually the Marines shown are members of the elite Silent Drill Platoon, not new recruits.

With its focus on men doing rigorous basic training exercises, the new spot has a more testosterone-fueled quality than last year’s campaign, which featured the precise rifle-handling exhibition of the Silent Drill Platoon at iconic American locales, from Times Square to the Hoover Dam.

It also makes no effort to show the emotional or mental challenges involved in being a Marine, like coping with combat stress or death. General Milstead said future spots might take on some of those themes.

General Milstead called the new campaign, titled “America’s Few,” a “prequel” to last year’s campaign, because it shows how recruits are transformed into Marines. “It’s the truthful, gritty image of what it takes,” he said.

'America's Few'

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/...ica-s-few.html

'America's Marines' From 2008

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/...from-2008.html



Ellie

[thedrifter]

New Multimedia Campaign Inspires America's Youth to Earn the Title of 'Marine'
Fri Sep 18, 2009 8:00am EDT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The United States Marine Corps has
launched a new multimedia campaign, America's Few, to challenge America's
youth to prove they have what it takes to become a Marine.

The Marine Corps aims to recruit the best in each generation, focusing on
young Americans who hear the call to become a Marine and decide to make the
life-changing decision to answer it. The America's Few campaign features
three Marines who answered that call and earned the title Marine after
completing the most demanding recruit training our nation offers. The three
Marines, LCpl Oscar Franquez, Jr. of Canyon Country, Calif., LCpl Benjamin Lee
of Tulsa, Okla., and LCpl Martin McCallum of Freeport, N.Y., are all members
of the USMC Silent Drill Platoon, based at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C.

"The calling to become a United States Marine has always been answered by the
best and brightest of each generation," said Major General Robert E. Milstead,
Jr., Commanding General, Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

The America's Few campaign comes at a juncture when the Marine Corps is
focusing not only on enlistment numbers, but on the quality of new Marine
recruits when more and more young men and women are considering military
service as an option.

"There is only one reason to put yourself through the toughest 12 weeks of
your life - and that is to become a United States Marine," said LCpl Franquez.
"Becoming a Marine has allowed me to defend my country and become part of a
centuries old tradition of service and sacrifice.

For generations, the Marine Corps has taken young Americans who have answered
the call and forged them into Marines through a time-tested crucible known as
recruit training.

"Recruit training was the greatest challenge of my life," said LCpl Lee. "Our
title is earned, never given.

Marine Corps recruit training transforms the many into the few. It is an
unwavering and relentless process that presents the ultimate challenge: an
epic test of mind, body and character that molds our Nation's greatest
warriors.

"The training pushed me far beyond my perceived limits and inspired me to be
my best. In the end, I demonstrated to myself and my family that I have what
it takes to be a Marine," said LCpl McCallum.

America's Few is a prequel to America's Marines, launched in January 2008, to
strengthen America's understanding of what the Marine Corps stands for. The
America's Marines campaign consisted of a nationwide tour, a new Web site and
a TV advertisement that featured a symbolic line of Marines standing ready to
defend our nation. It was filmed at iconic landmarks and picturesque small
towns across the United States. America's Few was filmed this summer at Marine
Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., and on location at Point Judith, R.I.


The America's Few campaign includes national TV, print and online advertising,
in addition to digital mall signage, in-school TV, and social media websites.
The TV advertisement airs on Saturday, September 19, during the University of
Florida vs. University of Tennessee college football game on CBS at 3:30 p.m.
ET. The TV advertisement will air again on September 20 during the NFL Today
Show at 12:00 p.m. ET and again during the NFL Regional and National football
games. The TV advertisement will also run September 21 on ESPN during Monday
Night Football's coverage of the Indianapolis Colts vs. Miami Dolphins game at
8:30 p.m. ET.

The America's Few advertisement and additional online features are available
at Marines.com. For more information please contact the MCRC Public Affairs
Office.

Contact:
Marine Corps Recruiting Command
Public Affairs
MCRCPA@marines.usmc.mil
(703) 784-9454



SOURCE United States Marine Corps

Marine Corps Recruiting Command, Public Affairs, +1-703-784-9454,
MCRCPA@marines.usmc.mil

Ellie