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(September 6, 1999 8:00 a.m. EDT) - The Army's best recruiting tool would be either a severe depression or an unprovoked sneak attack on the United States.
Though both measures are of proven effectiveness, the public would regard them as a tad draconian to make up a shortfall of 7,000 recruits, so the Army has had to lower its sights somewhat.
Consideration is now being given to tinkering with the Army's highly successful but somewhat hoary recruitment slogan, "Be All That You Can Be."
The feeling is that "Be All That You Can Be" lacks pulling power with a generation - Generation X - that grew up with Bart Simpson as a hero. "Join the Army and underachieve" is not what you would call a rallying cry.
Advertising Age magazine rates "Be All That You Can Be" as the second-best ad jingle of the century, the first being, "You deserve a break today."
Like all great slogans, "Be All ..." is fundamentally meaningless, but then the Army was not after philosophy majors. "Be All ..." translates as "You Are All That You Are," but if you are not, it's probably because you're somebody else.
The beauty of "Be All ..." is that it hints at, without actually promising, the would-be recruit living up to his full potential. Once he signs the articles of indenture, the new recruit finds that the complete slogan is, "Be All That You Can Be. Or Else."
The easiest way for the Army to come up with a new slogan - and with $92 million to wave around, copyrights shouldn't be a problem - is to steal an old slogan. But the other jingles deemed effective by Ad Age are not readily adaptable:
"You deserve 50 push-ups today."
"See the USA in your M-1A."
"I wish I were an MRE wiener."
"Double your firepower, double your gun."
"The M-60 shoots good like a machine gun should."
A while back some soldiers sported T-shirts with the undeniably attention-getting slogan, "Join the Army. Travel to exotic lands. Meet new people and kill them." That slogan is a little too raw in an age when we bomb Serbia back into the 19th century and call it peacekeeping.
Other slogans might work, but they would attract the terminally dumb: "Surf's up in Sarajevo!" or "Ski Kosovo!"
The Army now attempts to lure recruits with a generous offer of up to $50,000 for college after a tour of enlistment. But this assumes that 17- and 18-year-olds have clear career goals, think long-term and plan carefully. For less money, the Army could say: "Serve four years and we'll give you a Corvette."
If the recruiters wanted to be really shameless with its hormone-addled target market, it could advertise something along the lines of: "All that steamy stuff you've heard about sex and the Army? It's true!"
Unfortunately for the recruiting officers but fortunately for everybody else, the Army cannot use its best recruiting slogan ever. It consisted of only one word: "Greetings." It came at the top of the draft notice.