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Air Force rolls out new advertising campaign

The Air Force’s new slogan and ad campaign, which debuted on television and the Internet on Feb. 24, is about more than recruiting. The media blitz is aimed at showing the American public that the Air Force is more than planes and pilots.

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The service has met or exceeded recruiting goals for eight consecutive years, but recent polling by the service and its ad agency, GSD&M Idea City, show the general public isn’t well-versed on the Air Force’s space and cyberspace missions.

That inspired the service’s new slogan, “Above All,” which speaks to the Air Force’s physical presence in the sky, space and the burgeoning battleground of cyberspace, account managers at GSD&M said. It also represents the Air Force’s overarching mission, Deputy Director of Public Affairs Col. Michael Caldwell said. “Above all we defend America, and we do that by dominating in air, space and cyberspace,” he said.

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The campaign seeks to address the Air Force’s lack of visibility in many of its missions. Media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan commonly features ground troops who represent the bulk of the forces in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Although Air Force pilots are dropping bombs, delivering cargo, calling in airstrikes, providing security and evacuating wounded troops every day, they are seen much less often. The service’s role in homeland defense is more apparent to the average American — they can simply look up from time to time and see military jets flying overhead. But the Air Force’s primary role in the increasingly important realm of space and cyberspace is not generally known.

“Our research found that the American public doesn’t understand the Air Force — who we are, what we do, why we do it — as well as we believe they should,” Air Force spokesperson Vicki Stein said in an e-mail to Air Force Times.

Although no officials have linked the new slogan and ad campaign to the service’s ongoing effort to modernize the fleet — a hugely expensive effort — Air Force leaders have for months often and loudly proclaimed that the service needs $20 billion more per year for at least 10 years.

In an increasingly tight budgetary environment, there is no way officials are going to get even close to that much without a lot more support from Congress. And that is unlikely without more public awareness of what the Air Force does. The battle, in a sense, is for the hearts and minds of taxpayers.

Beyond alerting Americans to the Air Force’s space and cyberspace missions, the campaign emphasizes the urgent need for improved defense in those realms in light of modern threats.

Explaining those missions “in the context of the way the world has changed ... really made a huge difference for people, and made [the information] a lot more essential and critical to them,” said Lee Pilz, vice president of GSD&M Idea City and director of the Air Force account. “The idea that satellites could be shot down, or that other countries are actually ... attacking each other in cyberspace” gave people a greater appreciation of the Air Force’s efforts to protect American space and computerized assets.

The first three TV commercials for the campaign are intended to alert Americans to modern threats to homeland security that are handled by airmen. Filming has taken place at Vandenberg, Travis and Edwards air force bases in California — bases that have the assets GSD&M wanted to show and which could provide the group access, Pilz said.

Focus on cyberspace

A cyberspace ad aired first, starting Feb. 24. According to descriptions of the partially finished ads provided by GSD&M, the cyberspace ad opens with a shot of the Pentagon and a question: “This building will be attacked 3 million times today. Who is going to protect it?” The scene shifts to show airmen working at computer terminals at a Cyber Command base and closes with the line, “It takes Air Force technology to defend America in a changing world.”

Commercials on space and airpower will debut in the following weeks. The space ad opens with a view of Earth from space as a satellite slides into view. The announcer asks, “What if your cell phone calls, your television, all GPS systems, even your bank transactions, could be taken out with a single missile? They can.” A missile then zooms up and destroys the satellite.

“Air Force vision,” the announcer says, is the nation’s only defense.

The third in the first wave of commercials depicts areas of potential armed conflict around the world. An F-22 Raptor zooms into the scene — this time, “Air Force reach” is America’s saving grace.

Airmen’s reactions

Although the campaign’s effect on the public is yet to be seen, the slogan “Above All” is already drawing varied reactions from airmen. Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley announced the new campaign to airmen Feb. 19 with a short video on the Air Force Portal.

In forums and blogs, numerous airmen fretted over one question: Will “Above All” make soldiers, Marines and sailors think airmen see themselves as superior?

“I think it gives the wrong idea,” said a senior airman at Osan Air Base, South Korea, who wrote to Air Force Times on the condition of anonymity. “If it’s taken to mean that we’re ‘Above All’ of the other services, then that infuriates me,” the airman said. “No service is better than the other — we all have our ‘sibling rivalry,’ but when push comes to shove, we all do an essential job on the battlefield. We are all on the same team.”

One commenter on AirForceTimes.com called the slogan “hoity-toity”; another, “holier-than-thou.”

In that and other forums, many expressed nostalgia for the Air Force’s longest-running slogan, “Aim High.” Also common were complaints about the Air Force spending money on a new ad campaign in a period of tight budgets and personnel cuts.

But there was also plenty of support for the new campaign. Some were thrilled that it signals a departure from the “Do Something Amazing” campaign, which many airmen despised.

“This new slogan talks a bigger game, going beyond just showing that we perform very important tasks for our country’s national defense,” Senior Airman Jason Walton wrote in an e-mail to Air Force Times from Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. “‘Above All’ delivers a far stronger message that we’re the best at what we do, and when you’re trying to pitch a product, you always market yourself as such.”

The campaign is, after all, about marketing, said ad executive Pilz.

The new slogan was “very well liked” among civilians in polls, Pilz said. “People have the general sense that taglines and advertising campaigns are all designed to sell something, so if there’s some sense of superiority, then that’s expected.”

Caldwell said polls among airmen and other service members showed “Above All” was well-received.

“It is a bold statement, but our airmen are bold,” Caldwell said. “They have to be bold in today’s environment.”

A bigger reach

As with previous campaigns, the “Above All” series will appear wherever 16- to 24-year-olds devote their attention: at sporting events, on popular cable TV channels and on the Web. That demographic produces the vast majority of Air Force recruits and is as much a target as any previous campaign, Pilz said.

But to educate the general public about its missions, the Air Force also will put ads where older and more varied audiences will find them. Newspapers including USA Today, The New York Times and the Washington Post will carry ads, as will magazines such as Time, Newsweek and Smithsonian.

The campaign will feature a more traditional Web presence than “Do Something Amazing,” with lengthy articles on the Air Force’s missions. The “Do Something Amazing” Web site, which garnered awards from the Web Marketing Association for its unorthodox presentation and true-to-life videos, will be kept up as a separate recruiting effort, Pilz said.

Another reason for reaching out to nonrecruits is to foster support for service in the Air Force among potential recruits’ so-called “influencers” — parents, teachers and mentors. That’s essential in an increasingly competitive recruiting environment.

Air Force research showed “fewer young people have the inclination to serve in the military, and there are fewer people out there who have the inclination to influence younger people to serve in the military,” Caldwell said.

The Army’s newest campaign targets influencers with ads that describe the Army as a character-building institution that could lead to greater job opportunities. The Air Force will try to convince influencers that new recruits will join a service with an indispensable role in homeland defense, conveying importance and technical expertise.

To reach more people, the Air Force is asking for more money. The 2009 proposed budget includes a $59 million increase in advertising funds over the $53 million average spent on recruiting ads over the past few years. If that request is met, Caldwell said, the money would go to buying more ad space, mostly on television, but wouldn’t affect the campaign’s message.

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