How US Army’s $11 Million Marketing With The Rock Flopped

Me: Maybe being vaccinated is not the adventure new recruits want.

How US Army’s $11 Million Marketing With The Rock Flopped

August 1, 2024

The Army is regretting a $11 million marketing deal with the United Football League and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, which failed to bring in any new recruits and might have even hurt enlistment efforts. Despite big promises, Johnson didn’t deliver the expected social media posts, and the league’s poor performance didn’t help. Now, the Army wants some of its money back, amid criticism that this misstep echoes past failed marketing strategies. Can the Army recover from this high-profile blunder?

How US Army's $11 Million Marketing With The Rock Flopped 1

Following an $11 million marketing agreement with the United Football League and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, it appears that the Army is experiencing buyer’s remorse reports Military.com.

Internal documents and emails obtained by Military.com reveal that the high-profile, high-dollar arrangement probably had no positive effect on recruiting new Army members and may have even hurt the organization’s ability to locate recruits. The service might even try to recoup a portion of its costs.

The UFL is a new minor league alternative to the NFL that had a poor inaugural season from March to June when the Army signed the pact earlier this year. Crucially, the agreement included Johnson, the league’s owner and a worldwide celebrity, as a fictitious brand ambassador for the Army. However, the service claimed Johnson broke his promise to post a certain quantity of service-related content on his social media platforms.

The announcement coincides with the Army’s historic recruiting crisis, which has been made worse in part by the service’s inability to adapt to contemporary marketing trends. Even though the majority of Gen Z’s media consumption has moved away from traditional television, a large portion of its efforts are still directed toward funding cable TV-style advertisements and marketing agreements with other traditional television broadcasts, such as sports.

An internal evaluation of the proposal reveals that the UFL contract was so disastrous that 38 enlistments were predicted to be lost as a result. Army planners evaluate whether time and funds might be better used for other projects using a variety of measures, and the UFL effort and resources were viewed by the service as a net negative for recruiting.

The majority of the agreement involved conspicuous Army branding, like as the logo of the army on players’ clothing, during UFL games. However, Johnson remained the focal point, someone who service strategists hoped would strengthen the Army brand because he is one of the world’s most respected superstars with broad appeal across all demographics.

Johnson’s social media presence and the commitment that he would promote the Army were two factors in the deal’s attraction. Johnson is a social media titan with 396 million Instagram followers. According to military records, the Army estimated that each social media post was worth $1 million, and it anticipated five of them. However, Johnson only made two of the five social media posts, according to Army documents, meaning he did not live up to the agreement.

According to records, the Army is seeking to recover $6 million in total from the UFL. It was unclear, though, how the agency arrived at that estimate.

“We are in the process of working with the UFL to determine the final cost,” Laura DeFrancisco, a spokesperson for the Army’s marketing arm, told Military.com.

DeFrancisco declined to comment on specifics or whether anything was incorrect when he told Military.com that some of the files the outlet examined on the Army’s UFL arrangement were taken out of context. She also turned down requests for interviews from the publication.

A request for a response was not answered by Johnson’s spokesperson or the United Football League.

Army officers had cautioned against collaboration with the UFL from the start, or rather with the two minor football leagues that would later combine to form the UFL, the XFL, and USFL. Even the most optimistic estimate indicated that the cooperation would not produce many recruits, according to service officials, who also said that the financial load was far too great and viewership was too low.

In an interview, a senior Army marketing official compared the agreement to the National Guard’s $88 million NASCAR sponsorship, which allegedly failed to attract a single new soldier. But in the end, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George personally pushed through the UFL agreement, as per an email between him and top staff that Military.com examined.

Since April, Johnson has not shared anything on Instagram about the Army. He shared pictures of himself with generals in one post, one of which showed him embracing George. Some included video footage of him at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.

“In terms of The Rock, it’s unfortunate he was pulled away at a time when we expected him to be present with us to create content for his social media channels,” Col. Dave Butler, a spokesperson for George, said in a statement. “But we’re working with the UFL to rebalance the contract. The Rock remains a good partner to the Army.”

According to an internal Army document, there have been multiple communication breakdowns caused by “inexperienced” UFL staff. “UFL’s lack of experience liaising between brand/networks was very apparent during planning [the] process, and created a significant amount of additional work,” the report stated.

Army marketing officers have a “lack of confidence” that future agreements with the UFL will be fruitful, according to the confidential assessment. Concerns about the UFL’s inefficiency as a recruiting tool were also voiced by some Army leaders behind closed doors. According to Army internal stats, the average viewing of an NCAA game is around ten times higher than that of the UFL, despite the UFL deal costing roughly half of what the service spent on the NCAA.

In contrast to previous generations, Gen Z has virtually entirely abandoned traditional television and has a far lower interest in sports (33% of Gen Zers do not watch live sports, compared to 22% of Millennials), per a 2022 Morning Consult poll.

However, since young Americans spend a large portion of their viewing time on TikTok—which the Pentagon is prohibited from advertising due to concerns on Capitol Hill that the platform’s parent company may provide sensitive user data to the Chinese government—part of the Army’s marketing strategy also involves reaching out to parents and older people who might be in the orbit of potential recruits.

Previously, GreatGameInternational reported that recent photos shared on social media show the US military trying to recruit youngsters outside Top Gun screenings amidst declining interest in joining the army and increasing its financial incentive to join by up to $50,000 in bonuses.

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Me: Maybe being vaccinated is not the adventure new recruits want.