U.S. Army commercial — and what it doesn’t show

Published 11/18/07

“There’s strong, and then there’s Army strong.” So goes the Army’s commercial. It shows what you might expect: Soldiers in various garb in various situations. They climb walls, crawl through foliage, jump from helicopters, and so on.

But in the dozen or so scenes of soldiers in action, not one — not one — showed a desert. There were jungles and fields of grain and prairies, but never a desert scene.

Funny, huh?

The Fray

7 responses (add yours)

Barry Light says:

If you’ve noticed, the Marines advertisement shows desert scenes. And not just once. With the overwhelming coverage of Iraq, does anyone honestly believe that an Army recruit wouldn’t know he/she has a chance to go to Iraq?

November 20th, 2007 at 10:21 AM

Andrew says:

“[D]oes anyone honestly believe that an Army recruit wouldn’t know he/she has a chance to go to Iraq?”

Depends on whether the Army has stopped lying to them.

November 20th, 2007 at 10:26 AM

Barry Light says:

Great article on the state of our public school system! I knew our kids were being dumbed-down but that takes the cake. You think maybe instead of blaming the Army recruiters, we could blame the teachers who must not be teaching their students World History?

November 20th, 2007 at 10:34 AM

Kortnii Kerello says:

thats actually kind of sad. I have friends in the army and they agree that the commercials are pretty lame and nontelling of real war acivity.

November 20th, 2007 at 10:38 AM

Gnomic says:

If they want to be real, they need to start showing scenes of carnage, hospital wards, cemetaries, and families greaving. They should show the tempatures and the full body armor, the bug bites and sickness.

And then they should show all the people who still support this war at thier formal dinners, and then thier tax returns, and then pictures of thier children leading happy lives.

November 20th, 2007 at 10:50 AM

btezra says:

reality is perception, right?

November 26th, 2007 at 5:09 PM

Dan says:

Marketing is marketing.

Beer commercials don’t show folks dying from liver sclerosis or getting arrested for killing people when they drive drunk.

The nature of marketing is that you frame your product in the best possible light, even if you have to stretch the truth a bit to do it.

There are plenty of great things that can be said about military service, and many benefits to be gained by enlisting. Naturally an advertisement focused toward recruiting new Soldiers will show the benefits and not the risks.

I don’t have any problem with the military being held to the same standard as every other business in this country where advertising is concerned.

If every company offering a product for sale were required to focus on negativity and possible danger, half the businesses in America would go under - I wouldn’t buy a new car if every time I turned on the TV I was treated to numerous commercials showing horrible car crashes with the victims burning alive inside the twisted wreck - and more folks die in car crashes every year than die in Iraq.

November 27th, 2007 at 4:07 PM