One of the more distasteful aspects of America’s all-volunteer military—particularly when it’s entangled in an unpopular war—is the spectacle of highly paid advertising executives devising slick, deceptive marketing campaigns to lure poor and working-class children into enlisting.
The newest such campaign is built around a website: Myfuture.com, ostensibly a “career” site aimed at 16-24 year-olds. Tied in with the campaign are two music videos by DeStorm Power, a “Brooklyn rapper” with a popular YouTube channel.
Actually, he’s a professional pitchman who tries really hard to bring Bed-Stuy cred to mainstream megabrands.
DeStorm, whose Facebook bio makes no mention of military service, but details his art-school credentials, has also rapped on behalf of Heinz, KFC, Pepsi, and WinterFresh.
The recruitment videos are titled, subtly, “The Good Choice” and “The Bad Choice.”
The latter shows a young man foolishly choosing a life of petty crime, instead of “do[ing] right by [his] country.” The former—which, notably, has gotten about 100,000 fewer views so far—shows a brighter future for the young man, thanks to the Army.
Don’t join the military: Knock up your nagging girlfriend, go to prison.
Join the military: Marry a hottie, qualify for a mortgage, win a couple of war medals.
As simple as the choice seems, in these videos, the truth is somewhat more complicated. Any honest enlistment pitch would have to include the experience of tens of thousands of veterans like this one:
Joe Callan, 30, left the Marine Corps in February, after three tours in Iraq in which he lost more friends than he cares to count. Now he lives with his wife, a University of New Mexico nursing student, and two daughters, in an asbestos-ridden campus apartment that reminds him of base housing.
Sometimes, Callan thinks about that famous picture from V-J Day, 1945, of the sailor kissing the nurse. There will be no V-I Day, 2009.
“If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were to end today, nobody’d give a shit. Nobody’d even notice,” he says…
As Callan says, “shooting shit” doesn’t translate well to civilian life. The New Mexico Department of Veterans Services points vets to its “featured employer,” Walmart.
“Fuck Walmart,” Callan says.
The Myfuture.com campaign, announced today, is sponsored by the Department of Defense Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies program.
The website itself is registered to Mullen Advertising. Earlier this year, Mullen won a $2.4 million advertising services contract with the Army.
The agency is a subsidiary of the publicly traded Interpublic Group, whose chairman and CEO, Michael I. Roth, made $6.3 million last year.
Here’s the lobby of Mullen’s new offices in Boston, pictured on the agency’s Flickr page.
Beats a moldy VA hospital.
Here’s Mullen’s president and CEO, Joe Grimaldi, pictured in a Boston Herald photo, throwing the first pitch at Fenway Park.
Maybe “The Good Choice” is to skip the military and go into advertising.