Selling Soldiering to Consumers: Advertising, Media, and the Volunteer Army

[摘要] A study of the United States military’s recruiting during the 'all-volunteer,” post-conscription era requires synthesizing scholarship on advertising, propaganda, and politics. Throughout the twentieth century, before the draft ended, advertisers contracted by the US government waged countless national campaigns meant to inform, persuade, and rally, producing what cultural historian Paul Rutherford describes as the 'colonization of the American public sphere.”Some of the most iconic advertisements touted military service.'We Can Do It!” and 'Uncle Sam Wants You” are icons of American recruitment history that originated as advertisements in propaganda posters. Their legacy remains potent after decades of distance. In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, the United States military faced numerous public relations challenges due in part to the momentum of the anti-war movement. The mass medium of advertising provided a venue in which image control could be asserted. With a major shift toward the volunteer concept of manpower recruitment and retention impending, advertising strategies became more important than ever before. This project investigates the role of advertising in transitioning the army branch, in particular to a volunteer recruitment model. The army has had the largest ranks to fill and the most challenged reputation, which is why it is also the branch that enjoys the largest recruiting budget. Drawing on rich archival materials and extensive research, I argue that the origins of volunteer-era recruiting strategies predate the overturn of the draft by decades and that recruiting advertisements operate ideologically in addition to their practical intent. By tracing the evolving conceptions of service in depictions, I examine the cultural influences, political contexts, public policy, and visual representations that enabled the volunteer military to be a success. In revealing the above, I also provide an overview of the history of the advertising industry’s partnerships with the department of defense across the twentieth century.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh