The Hardest Sell in Advertising?

As the Iraq war's casualty toll mounts and timetable drags on, how does Madison Avenue go about the business of selling the armed forces to desperately needed potential volunteers?

Carefully. And expensively.

The Defense Department's annual budget for recruiting and advertising has jumped by more than 75 percent from pre-war levels, elevating the Pentagon to the upper ranks of all consumer advertisers. It spends as much to attract recruits as Ford and Verizon each spend on buying advertising space.

"We think of it as the ultimate considered purchase," says Lee Pilz, account director at Austin-based agency GSD&M Idea City, which handles the Air Force account. It's a decision based on research and requires commitment, and most careers don't come with a threat of physical danger, he says.

In Iraq alone, more than 4,000 American troops have died in combat, which is now entering its sixth year. Nearly 30,000 have been wounded, many of them losing limbs to the roadside bombs that continue to plague American forces and their Iraqi allies.

Those numbers, along with a public perception of the Iraq war as unnecessary, have contributed to the Pentagon's well-documented difficulty in reaching its recruiting goals, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. Ramping up the ad budget is seen as a relatively cost-effective way to try to reverse the trend.

"Advertising has increased a lot over the last few years, and the reason is because they consider it to be cheap," says Anita Dancs, a researcher at the National Priorities Project, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Creating and publishing ads is relatively inexpensive compared with opening more recruiting stations and hiring more recruiters, she says. Also, recruiters can more easily target influencers like parents via mass media like TV, she says.

Between 2003 and the 2009 budget, the services within the Department of Defense earmarked about $10.6 billion for recruiting and advertising, an average of $1.5 billion a year. The Pentagon doesn't break out advertising from its overall recruitment and advertising budget.

The average annual bill for the five years before the war was about $940 million. In 2002, the Pentagon's tally for recruitment and advertising jumped to $1.2 billion — slightly more than Verizon spent on media that year, according to research company TNS Media Intelligence.

Pentagon spending for recruitment and advertising peaked at $1.7 billion in 2006. That year Ford spent about the same amount to advertise its cars and trucks.

The biggest spending increase has come at the Army National Guard, which has borne a disproportionate burden in maintaining troop levels in Iraq. Since 2003, its spending on recruiting and advertising has jumped 143 percent to $258 million in 2009. The number peaked in 2006 at $358 million.

"Everybody is well aware of the fact if you sign up for the National Guard or Reserves you're very likely to be activated and sent to Iraq," Dancs said.

Over all, the Army — the largest military service — has the largest budget. In 2009, $646 million is earmarked for recruiting and advertising; that includes thousands of dollars in incentives for new recruits.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said the army is competing with corporations for the same young people, and it must appeal to parents concerned about their son or daughter dying in the war.

The Marine Corps has also targeted recruiting efforts to parents and other "influencers," says Jay Cronin, who manages the Marine Corps account at JWT. In 2003, the agency added TV spots emphasizing the larger purpose of being a Marine. Before the war, the message was more about self-improvement.

In 2001, the Air Force's message changed from highlighting opportunities like money for college and good jobs after service, to emphasizing patriotism and pride, Pilz says.

But the war isn't solely a detractor to potential recruits, Pilz says. The war increases interest because there's an obvious need for soldier, marines, airmen, and sailors.

by Willow Duttge