The Selling of the "Individual"
Military Propaganda and Recruitment Practices

by Miranda Amanti

The Armed Forces recently came out with a new ad campaign – "Army of One" – that presents the military as both very diverse and fair. The ads appear not only in popular sitcoms like Friends and The Simpsons, and in the pages of People magazine; they have found their way onto the web. The Army's website contains mock interviews with a slew of people from different ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds as well as from different regions of the country. You will also undoubtedly find that there are as many women as there are men featured on the interactive website. You can view cadets giving online interviews and all seem so happy and satisfied with what they are doing. They seem to be learning about themselves, growing, and becoming individuals – Armies of One.

What is funny about this new campaign is that no one believes it, not even military recruiters. Recently I went into an Army recruiting station to get some information about what they offer. I soon got into a conversation with the two officers about the new Army of One campaign. I got a very strong response from both of them. They think it is "lame." They went on to tell me that the Army is not at all like those ads. They said that the ads are almost offensive to people serving in the military because they do such a bad job of portraying what it is really like. The ad campaign makes the Army seem like an individual effort. It stresses the growth of the individual and sends the message that the Army needs people who are strong, tough and can survive on their own.

Of course it makes sense that these ads portray this image when you consider their main target: young men. The Army conveniently place these ads in the middle of shows they know young men are watching, then they portray the Army as a place to grow, to become a man, and all of the sudden the boys are listening. Young men are always trying to step across that invisible line that separates the boys from the men but because our society has such a lack of initiation rites there is nothing for men to point to and say, "see I did that, it proves that I am a man." The Army is tapping into this, telling these young men that if they join the Army there are many benefits; education, money, etc., but that the biggest perk is that once they get through basic training they will be men. They will be the recruit they see in the ad: tough, smart, and an individual. The military sells a similar (customized) version of this message to a full range of racial and ethnic groups and to women.

Why would the military sell an image of itself that is not accurate? Looking at the ads reminded me of the research I just completed for my college thesis on advertising and young women. It seems to me that there is a lot of pressure on teenagers to fit in and go along with the crowd. Many young people are looking for a way to be accepted and to feel special without feeling the pressure to become homogenized.

The more sophisticated advertisers in the "youth market" play to this need for individual recognition in an effort to get masses of young people to buy products. The Public Broadcasting System recently aired a documentary, The Merchants of Cool: A Report on the Creators and Marketers of Popular Culture for Teenagers, which makes this same point. The documentary takes a look at the strategies the advertisers use to market a product. Marketers pick out leaders in the teen world – those teens that are willing to be a bit more of an individual than their peers – and use them and their style to appeal to the rest of the crowd. Actually taking the styles from the teens directly and re-marketing it to them makes them feel more ownership over the style and more likely to buy the product. Individualism is very important in the eyes of young people. Advertisers seem to have recognized this and are using it to sell products. Now the military has caught on and is using that idea to recruit people into the ranks.

The problem with the new ad campaign is that it is just not truthful. That became very clear to me when the officers in the recruiting station had no qualms about saying outright that the Army is not about individualism. In fact, one of the officers said that "they break down the individuality in a person and build them back up as a team member." There is no place for the individual in the U.S. Army.

About the Author

Miranda Amanti has just completed college in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. She can be reached at youthmil@afsc.org.

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