How PR Ploys Fill the Pentagon's Recruiting Quotas

Increasing "the ranks of our military" is "one of the first steps we can take together" to "position America to meet every challenge that confronts us," said President Bush in last week's State of the Union address. "Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years."

The 92,000 figure was put forward by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 12 that more troops are needed to boost "combat capability" and "strengthen our military for the long war against terrorism." The Pentagon plans to meet that goal by reenlisting former Marines and increasing the Army's recruitment and retention rates.

Under the plan, the Army would only "slightly increase its recruitment goals -- by 2,000 to 3,000" a year, according to UPI. But in 2005, "the Army failed to meet its annual recruiting goal by the widest margin in two decades," reported the New York Times. To meet its 2006 goal, the Army hired more recruiters, raised the maximum allowable age for recruits, doubled the percentage of recruits who scored low on aptitude tests, issued waivers for some recruits' prior convictions, and significantly increased cash bonuses.

If it was that difficult for the Army to meet past recruiting goals, how will it meet future, larger ones? Some clues are offered in the Army's self-nomination for a prestigious public relations award.

The Army submitted its "Birth of an Army, Birth of Freedom: The U.S. Army 225th Birthday Campaign" for consideration in the Public Relations Society of America's 2001 annual awards. (The Army won an award, but then so did the U.S. Northern Command in 2006, for "outstanding achievement in strategic public relations planning and implementation in response to Hurricane Katrina.")

The nomination documents provide a rare, detailed look at Army recruiting, including how the largest branch of the U.S. armed forces works with public relations firms and major media to meet recruiting goals. Moreover, they illustrate how a small campaign, by Pentagon standards -- the Army spent $370,000 and used its "in-house marketing team" -- can reach tens of millions of people, thanks in large part to uncritical support from broadcast outlets.

Ketchum as Catch Can

Following significant troop reductions throughout the 1990's, "the Army was becoming disconnected from the American people," explains the awards nomination. "Recruiting new soldiers had become increasingly more difficult, with the Army having not met its recruiting goals" for fiscal years 1997 through 1999. The Army's public affairs staff -- the government's preferred description for its PR people -- hoped that a concerted media campaign could "assist recruiting efforts by using the Army 225th Birthday as a mechanism for attracting potential recruits."

The Army drew on extensive research to develop the campaign, including a survey by a major and controversial PR firm. "In conjunction with the Army's Training With Industry program at Ketchum, an Army Public Affairs officer worked with Ketchum's research department to conduct attitudinal research about the Army," the awards nomination states. "The study was focused on regions of the United States without a large military presence."

Remember Armstrong Williams, the conservative pundit outed for promoting No Child Left Behind while secretly pocketing payments from the Bush administration? He was a subcontractor on Ketchum's PR contract with the U.S. Department of Education. Ketchum also produced video news releases, or fake TV news reports, for the Education and Health and Human Services Departments that were later found to be illegal covert propaganda. When Ketchum won another major government contract in 2005, to promote the Medicare drug benefit, the Washington Post felt the need to note that "the firm promised the new ads will not cross the legal line."