ARLINGTON, Va. — Come October, the Air Force will recruit via the silver screen.
Two years after launching an extremely successful television and print ad campaign, the service is taking its advertising campaign to the movie theaters, and boosting its advertising dollars from $2.5 million to $23 million for the next year, spokeswoman Lt. Col. Cynthia Scott-Johnson said.
The service unveiled four new advertising spots Monday, replacing the first batch of spots, themed “We’ve Been Waiting For You,” with four new story lines that show how teenagers can apply their talents and interests to jobs within the Air Force, Scott-Johnson said.
In this round, the featured airmen are actual Air Force personnel who actually perform the jobs highlighted in the commercials, she said.
One ad features a group of young men lost while snowboarding, who are led back on track by one of them who later becomes a B-1 pilot leading a strike package.
In a second, a police officer approaches a young teen loitering on a street corner, shines a high-powered light and calls the teen to the cruiser.
When the teen pokes his head into the car, the officer complains that his computer has malfunctioned. The teen becomes an airborne battle manager dealing with electronics. “That one always gets a chuckle,” Scott-Johnson said.
In a third, an urban teenager collects food from his friends and donates the collection to the less fortunate. He becomes a C-17 loadmaster preparing a humanitarian relief drop.
The fourth spot features a young girl fascinated by an approaching tornado, and whom her father must sweep up because she won’t move to the shelter. She becomes a space command mission specialist and a storm watcher. The fourth is the ad that will be featured at movie theaters, Scott-Johnson said.
The latter two also were translated in Spanish in an effort to recruit from the Latino communities, Scott-Johnson said. “Only 5 percent of our force is Latino, less than the rest of the services and less than the population at large, which is about 14 percent.”
Over the next year, the Air Force will spend the $23 million to air the ads, created by GSD&M out of Austin, Texas, both in the states and overseas, primarily during television programs targeted at teens and young adults aged 16 to 24.
“The goals of the campaign are raising public awareness of the mission of the U.S. Air Force, reaching out to the next generation and getting them interested in the Air Force, and retaining the men and women who currently serve,” Col. Chris Geisel, Director of the Air Force Integrated Marketing Division, said in a statement.
Focus groups conducted to measure the effectiveness of the original four spots showed “they were very successful and we were very pleased, that’s why we’re continuing with the fresh ones in the same theme,” Scott-Johnson said.
