Don't sweat it. Army officials didn't think so, either.
The service's latest 60-second commercial debuted Monday, featuring black-and-white photos over stirring narration and music, offering glimpses of many aspects of service and sacrifice, and extolling the virtues of joining "the Army team."
It ended without the "Army Strong" tagline — a phrase soldiers will continue to see in internal Army communications, but one that's ended a nine-year run as the familiar face of Army branding after research showed civilians didn't buy in.
"Our job is to market the Army [to the public]," Mark Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for marketing and the director of the Army Marketing and Research Group, said in a Wednesday interview. " 'Army Strong' just didn't resonate with them. You'd either get an 'eh' sort of response, or you'd get an, 'Of course you're strong. You're supposed to be. You're in the Army. …'
"Everybody in the Army understands ['Army Strong'] intuitively, because they're a stronger human being for their experiences. People outside the Army didn't get it."
The tagline won't be replaced, Davis said.
The unveiling of the "Army Strong" ad campaign, at the 2006 Association of the United States Army Convention in Washington, D.C.
Photo Credit: Betsy Weiner/Army
AMRG teamed with New York-based marketing firm McCann Worldgroup to create the spot, aiming to impress the civilian audience by presenting the Army as an elite team seeking new members because, as the narrator puts it, "there is important work to be done." The message also played well internally, and with a group that may have been underserved by past Army marketing efforts.
"Veterans absolutely love it," said Davis, a retired officer who left active duty in 2006 after a 25-year career that included a 2003 Iraq deployment and a Bronze Star Medal. "That's a group of folks that have been a little disaffected from the Army, and we're trying to bring them back into the fold."
Keeping vets and active soldiers on board with the message holds greater importance in the age of social media, Davis said, as a disconnect likely would lead to those groups ripping any offending ad campaign to shreds on Reddit, Facebook or other social-media outlets, in full view of the target audience.
Mark Davis, a retired Army officer and deputy assistant secretary of the Army for marketing and the director of the Army Marketing and Research group, poses as part of the "I became a soldier" campaign, which marketing officials say already has gained traction among veterans.
Photo Credit: Army
#HashtagStrong
Just because "Army Strong" is gone doesn't mean new outreach efforts won't include memorable phrases — a marketing must in a short-message, hashtag-happy social media environment.
One technique that's gotten early online traction: Service members and veterans posing for black-and-white pictures, similar to the commercial, holding a sign with the words "I became a soldier" and the hashtags #ArmyTeam and #makingadifference.
Alongside those images, "we've been posting their stories," said Crystal Deleon, AMRG's social media manager. "Why they joined, what they did, what they think they did to make a difference while they were in."
Some of those stories have been seen and shared by 200,000 people, Deleon said, "just because, I think, of that personal connection. … People read those and say, 'That could be me.' "
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, landed a spot in the new commercial for his look, not his rank, Army marketing officials said.
Photo Credit: Screen shot/U.S. Army
And there is the matter of getting some screen time for generals: An image of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looking stoically out the window of a helicopter during a 2013 holiday tour of Afghanistan, appears at the 35-second mark — but not because of his prominent military post, Davis said.
"The truth is, most Americans don't know who Gen. Dempsey is," he added. "We kind of think everybody knows everything about us, and most Americans don't know anything about the military. ... It was chosen because of that look, that dramatic look."
Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.
