Services are to Blame for Recruitment Woes

As he tells the story, General Chuck Krulak, Commandant of the Marine Corps, was attending a meeting on the Marines’ recruitment advertising program. He viewed a commercial wherein some sort of video game hero performs in the standard nebulous yet hyperactive manner of video game heroes–scurrying about, smiting everything in sight.

“Very nice,” said the two-war veteran. “But where’s the gungy stuff? The tanks. The helicopters. The jets.”

“General,” replied one of the ad agency reps, “we’re not trying to recruit you.”

But who are the Marines, and the other services, trying to recruit nowadays? And how good a job are they doing? And what can the ads, indeed, the whole strange history of paid recruitment advertising, tell us about their success or failure?

It’s no great secret that the services are having trouble attracting young people in adequate quantity and quality. Last year, only the Marines (a fact to which we shall return) met and exceeded their goals. The Army, Navy, and Air Force fell short by thousands, and expect to do so again this year.

Their response to the recruiting challenge? Dumb it down: accept more high school dropouts and lower mental categories. Hype it up: state-of-the-art, expensive commercials, featuring sensitive and benign drill instructors, beatific sergeants and petty officers, and images of gorgeous, happy young people–the kind you see in the Coke and Pepsi ads–cavorting in exotic locales. The message: Hey, kids, see . . . it’s really lotsa fun and we’re just like you.

Absent from the pitch, of course: six-month deployments to places like Bosnia and Saudi; shipboard duty; and body bags. In one sense, this may be no less dishonest than traditional advertising, with its antiseptic guts-and-glory motifs. But in another sense, these slick attempts to communicate with today’s youth on their own terms also exemplify the military’s failure to keep faith with itself.

And with the realities of hardship and war

In the early 1970s, as conscription slowly segued into the All-Volunteer Force (AVF), the Army launched its first major paid campaign. The theme: “Today’s Army Wants to Join YOU!” As subtext: “Take the Army’s Tour of Europe,” i.e., stay out of Nam.

The campaign and its variants ran most of the decade, with predictable results. Finally, the General Accounting Office hired a marketing consulting firm to assess strategy. Their conclusion: The problem isn’t the promotion. The problem is the product. A private corporation in this situation would normally suspend advertising until product defects and deficiencies were cured.

The Army responded by launching the now-classic “Be All You Can Be” campaign, which coincided happily with the Reagan years, and a surge of patriotism (and defense spending) that cured many of the product’s ills, at least for a while. At least until now.

Meanwhile, the Marines had also gone to extensive advertising. Unlike the Army, they didn’t announce their intention to join anyone, or help anybody be all they could be. Marine advertising made only the traditional claim. It’ll be tough, but if you make it, you’ll be a Marine. One 1970s poster showed Gomer Pyle nose to nose with his sergeant above the caption, “We Don’t Promise You a Rose Garden.” (According to legend, some posters were printed with an alternative slogan, “We Don’t Promise You ****,” but this seems to have been done mostly for in-house memorabilia.)

And today, the video game ads might speak the kids’ lingo, but they also recruit for a Corps that has toughened its accession and boot camp standards considerably.

So what’s the point? Just this.

People join the peacetime military for many reasons. Not all are heroic/patriotic (or, if you prefer, naïve). And yes, recruiting’s harder when the economy’s good, and military service is no longer one of the few routes out of poverty and discrimination.

But those young men and women who constitute the “available, interested, and qualified” pool, want something out of the experience besides pay and benefits, travel and fun. They may not put it eloquently or introspectively, but they want the military experience, i.e., the inculcation of the military virtues. Which means: They want to serve in special organizations that promote and adhere to those virtues, both as virtues in themselves and as vital preparation for going in harm’s way.

Today, as in the 1970s, the real problem isn’t the promotion. The problem is the product: a damaged, scandal-ridden, soul-corroded military that can neither compete with civilian employers on their own terms nor offer the unique attractions and challenges of virtuous military life.

And which must return to those virtues, or risk and invite disaster.

The Marines make quota because they’re the Marines. The same must once again be true of the other services.

Army. Navy. Air Force. Rebuild it. They’ll come.