Kelly's Blog

For a long time, the ads from the United States Army seemed as though they were aimed at individuals who didn’t have access to college or professional training. Joining the Army was viewed as a way to get funding for college and build your resume, but what about college graduates who already paid for their education or had advanced degrees? The Army is launching a new campaign today, aimed at those people exactly.

“The goals are to attract ambitious young Americans who might normally consider the Army beneath their career objectives and give the Army a jolt of much-needed creative leadership.”

The Army claims to have plenty of soldiers, yet lacks in officers – who fulfill important leadership roles.

“Four TV commercials will provide the public face of the campaign, all of which begin running Monday. The two that slowly reveal themselves to be Army ads tell the story of high-ranking corporate executives with experience as Army officers: Joseph DePinto, chief executive of 7-Eleven; and Otto Padron, a senior vice president at Univision.”

The commercial I saw is quite misleading for the first 18 seconds. I thought it was a commercial for 7-Eleven, but then I saw “West Point” under DePinto’s name. I’m hoping this means the Army is going to relax a little on its active recruitment of soldiers, because the idea that one should join the military to pay for college is a little outdated, and in this current state of affairs – downright selfish. On the other hand, I think it’s great that the Army is taking a new approach and focusing on educated individuals. It would be great to break the stigma of Army soldiers as alcoholic wife-beaters who can’t properly write a sentence – because I know a lot of both active and veteran military personnel – and that couldn’t be further from the truth. And most of them were already in college when they joined or deployed.

View one of the commercials and read the entire article here.