The Army has released four new recruiting commercials in as many months, with high energy dramatizations of what service looks like. But they’re also getting into the viral video game, dropping an Army recruiter trap anthem with a face that might already be familiar with soldiers.
Sgt. 1st Class Arlondo Sutton, whose videos under the stage name Rookie Baby go back several years, first went viral last year with a slow jam called “Enlisted,” featuring himself and other Atlanta Recruiting Battalion soldiers, touting the benefits of service, like education, housing and job experience.
In “Giving All I Got,” he teams up with Houston Recruiting Battalion’s Sgt. 1st Class Jason Locke, in a montage that features many of the Army’s 150 jobs and skills ― airborne, military police, combatives, working dog handling, air assault, infantry.
“When you poll that with people of our generation, we think it’s really creative and cool ― and actually, I would sign up for that,” Gen. Stephen Townsend, the head of Training and Doctrine Command, told reporters on Thursday.
The lyrics tout education benefits and job descriptions, with a bridge that hammers home the perk of having your bills paid for.
The full three-minute version is available through most of the Army’s social media channels, Townsend said, with shorter clips optimized for platforms with limits on video length.
Military police, including a working Belgian Malinois, figure heavily in the video. According to Townsend, the Army is putting an emphasis on law enforcement in some of its latest recruiting innovations.
“We found out that we have a lot of mutual interests,” he said of a meeting with Chicago and Illinois state police during a trip to the Midwest metropolis, one of 22 major cities where the Army is beefing up its recruiting efforts.
“For example, they don’t really want 19-year-old police recruits,” Townsend said. “They want them to have some life experience.”
The Chicago chief of police suggested it would be great for some if those young police hopefuls did an enlistment as an infantryman or MP, then came to the police academy a little more seasoned and mature.
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Now, Townsend said, the Chicago police department is referring interested teens to the Army, and recruiters are telling young people interested in a career in law enforcement how an Army enlistment could make them more competitive to the local police department.
“That’s the kind of thing, when senior leaders go to one of these cities, that’s what we’re trying to do,” he said.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
