Facing sagging recruitment numbers, the U.S. Army launched an aggressive new campaign, complete with strong direct mail, to boost recruitment.
1. Challenge: Call to Arms
As the world’s largest all-volunteer army, the U.S. Army must constantly look for fresh ways to engage the young men and women it seeks to recruit. This means broadcasting its messages across a wide range of media aimed at a diverse pool of candidates. Of course, there have been challenges to these efforts, especially during wartime. Here, Army spokesmen explain why the military branch saw the need to freshen its recruitment campaign and retool its messaging, and what obstacles it had to overcome to succeed.
2. Solution: A Show of Strength
The U.S. Army didn’t just re-craft its messages to its recruits, but also extended its new “Army Strong” campaign to recruits’ networks of family and influential friends. And in doing so, the military branch highlighted a range of themes country, honor, opportunity designed to motivate recruits from across a variety of backgrounds. Likewise, the Army relied on multiple media channels, including direct mail, to reach its audiences, in many cases driving respondents to its goarmy.com Web site. This installment explains how the Army decided to use mail and other elements of the multimedia mix to expand its appeal to highly segmented targets.
3. Results: Mission Accomplished
For the Army, measuring the success of its campaigns is easy in some respects: If recruiting numbers are up, the effort is generally thought to be successful. And indeed, buoyed by its multimedia “Army Strong” campaign, the branch is once again reaching its recruitment goals. In this segment, Army officials explain how blending the precision of direct mail with other media has allowed the branch to fill its ranks and remain strong at a time critical to American national security.
