US Marines use MySpace to Recruit new Soldiers

Categories: Community Marketing, Social Media, Web MarketingPosted on July 24th, 2006

I’ve discussed how radio stations are using MySpace to push events –it’s a killer marketing effort.

I heard on the news a few minutes ago that US Marines are using MySpace to recruit new soldiers –it makes sense as the primary audience (and older) they are seeking are using those tools. USA today reports that:

“The Marine Corps MySpace profile — featuring streaming video of barking drill sergeants, fresh recruits enduring boot camp and Marines storming beaches — underscores the growing importance of the Internet to advertisers as a medium for reaching America’s youth.”

MySpace is the top viewed website in North America –there’s no surprise that the USMC is using this as a marketing platform. Josh Weil has additional thoughts. I while back I wrote about how the MySpace generation is going to the workforce –I didn’t think about how the MySpace generation will enter the armed services as well.

I remember this girl in 1999 in SF laughed at me for having a personal web site. I told her in a few years that everyone would have a website –I wish I could ask her about this now.

View the Marine MySpace Page here

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 8:05 am and is filed under Community Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments

Ann Handley

Makes a lot of sense, I gotta say. It's a little weird. But it makes sense.

I'm amazed that it's as effective as it has been. I'll be interesting to see how well it continues to perform in the future.

Here's what I wonder, long-term: At what point will teens/young adults simply abandon MySpace entirely, because it's been co-opted by entities like USMC?

jeremiah_owyang

Ann

I hear the 'cool' kids have already left MySpace to other social networking tools or pure blogs.

It's getting over-marketed, esp when the US government is in there. What's next? "Right to say no myspace page?"

Adam Darowski

I currently work for a company that does the majority of its work in the military R&D realm. As we have started product-izing our offerings, I've said more than a few times that what we have to remember is that in a few years our end customers will be products of Halo and MySpace.

Good to see some confirmation of that.

jeremiah_owyang

Xbox contollers for the next M16?

I remember the First Person Shooter that the US Army launched, what was that called again? "US Army"?

Adam Darowski

That was America's Army, Jeremiah.

I'm not working on those kinds of things (which is actually kind of a good thing imo). But you'll get a kick out of this. Today, at the end of the day, I showed a prototype to a customer (ex-Army, now a consultant).

It was a blog. Disguised under a different name (because the Army frowns on blogging). He loved it. :)

Of course, I've added a bunch of other features to a standard WordPress build, but the basis is the same.