Events become
front lines for recruiting
By TERRY LEFTON
Staff writer
Published
November 22, 2010 : Page 18
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article.printArticle&articleId=67424
It's not hard to
find a representation of American soldiers at work. Push your TV remote enough
times and you'll invariably find U.S. soldiers battling. Ah, but building a
model of life in the Army that's modular enough to fit in a footprint that can
vary by as much as tenfold -- that's no easy task.
Try coordinating
a handful of different Army Strength in Action tours, each of which takes a
squadron of semis to haul it around to between 300 and 400 events a year.
Because of overlap, the Army claims 136 weeks of activation over an especially
busy 52-week period.
That kind of massive logistical challenge sounds like a job for the infantry, or Army Corps of Engineers. For the past five years, however, it's been Momentum Worldwide building and coordinating the Army's mobile marketing tours.
events to find qualified leads. In this case, it's
possible recruits.
Those tours
deploy alongside NASCAR and NHRA tracks, where they are supported by the Army's
sponsorship of drivers Ryan Newman and Tony Schumacher; visit spring-break
locations, such as Panama City, Fla., and South Padre Island, Texas; or set up
at high schools and various other events, including state fairs.
At the largest
rollouts, erected at events such as the Daytona 500, the Strength in Action
Tour has a 10,000-square-foot footprint. It has Strength of Body, Strength of
Technology, Strength of Team and Strength to Lead elements. Participants engage
in activities including an Apache helicopter flight simulator; a rock-climbing
wall; and a robotics exercise, in which participants guide a "droid" through an
obstacle course.
To gain entrance, participants must provide information and scan a driver's license, after which they get radio-frequency ID tags. That arms approaching recruiters (sometimes as many as 20 are on-site) with plenty of information as they try to sell an Army career, while escorting potential recruits through the exercises.
Smaller versions of the Army exhibit make frequent visits to high schools, where students compete against each other in a series of relay competitions.
Equipped with
tablet PCs, the recruiters can approach someone who's already indicated an
interest in technology when registering and whet his or her appetite by
dropping "Did you knows?" like "the average U.S. Army soldier has $17,000 worth
of equipment with him when he's in the field" or "there are 150 different
career-path opportunities within the Army."
In an age of
widespread attention deficits, real and imagined, the temptation is to measure
everything in terms of "stickiness." Consequently, a favorite statistic from
those working on the Army's mobile recruitment marketing is that the average
time spent within the Strength in Action Tour is 28 minutes.
The largest
activations can cost hundreds of thousands -- all aimed at generating what any
sales organization craves: qualified leads. In the case of the Army, that's a
17- to 24-year-old man or woman, whose career path is uncertain.
"Awareness is not
an issue for us; we've been around for 235 years," said Bruce Jasurda, chief
marketing officer for the U.S. Army Accessions Command. "There just isn't that
much opportunity anymore for young people to interact with a working soldier.
So we provide that."
You can't quite
enlist at Strength In Action tours and get the obligatory GI head shave, but
potential soldiers at least get a taste of the Army. They can learn about
different Army career paths and, if they are so inclined, can complete an
enlistment interview and the standard enlistment screening test. Any actual
sign-up would require a visit to a recruitment office.
The decisions to
enlist can take six months to a year and only three in 10 applicants qualify.
"We're the
ultimate considered purchase decision," Jasurda said. "It's a life decision,
not a lifestyle decision. But because only 1 percent of the [U.S.] population
has served, we still get very basic questions like, 'Will we live in Quonset
huts' and 'Am I allowed to be married and be in the Army.'"
It's all about
getting in potential recruits' faces -- in a good way.
"More than any
other account, face-to-face engagement is vital for the Army," said Tanya
Kesmodel, Momentum vice president, whose work on the account included a mini
basic training crash course and a parachute jump with the Army's Golden
Knights.
Kesmodel said
that over the past five years, recruitment targets have varied from 100,000 to
150,000 and they also have been met or exceeded every year. Last year, the Army
enlisted 107,000 recruits.
A slightly
smaller experiential campaign targets high school students. At racetracks or
even at the schools themselves, the Army School Challenge pits schools and
students against each other in a series of relay competitions that test mental
and physical skills. They include a small obstacle course and figuring how to
do a "team push-up" in which each student's feet are placed at a right angle on
the shoulders of one another.
Used in
conjunction with NASCAR and NHRA events, the attraction can be quite
compelling.
"It's really
vital for potential recruits to talk with officers and get a real idea of what
Army life is about," said Tom Boccuzzi, senior vice president and group
director of business leadership at Momentum. "The drivers are great athletes
and a big draw, but they also allow us to show that the team-orientation of
what they do is very similar to the teamwork that makes the Army work."
For more information contact: Tanya.Kesmodel@Momentumww.com
