If you’re reading this, the analytics behind this website tell me there’s a good chance you’ve served in the military, read a lot about the military and may even be in the military right now.
You also probably like to keep up with military recruiting ads, and you might have seen that the Marine Corps — the undisputed kings of moto-TV commercials — came out with its latest recruiting blitz on Nov. 7, a campaign called “Made For This.” It’s very Marine, with dress blues and rifles, patrolling platoons, fast roping, explosions, and orchestra music.
But if you’re reading this, odds are that “Made For This” was not made for you.
It was, however, made for Jack, who is 16, in 11th grade and the oldest of three brothers in the family that has been my neighbors for more than a decade. He got his driver’s license last summer, plays a lot of lacrosse and looks more and more every day like the privates and airmen and sailors who I run into on this job as they graduate from boot camps.
Jack is exactly who the Marine Corps is looking for in its eternal search for recruits.
The Corps is also looking for Jack’s friends: Isaiah, Sam and Colin, also high school juniors. They all play sports and are pretty sure they want to go to college but aren’t against joining the military. None had parents or siblings in the military, but most have a distant relative or two who has served.
So, to see if the Marines are reaching “the youths,” I bought a pizza-and-bread-knots deal from Dominos and invited them over to check out “Made for This” and some other recruiting ads from across the years.
And, yes: I showed them “the lava monster one.”
Here’s what they had to say:
‘Made For This’
To establish a baseline, I first asked the group, “What is the Marine Corps?”
First to answer was Sam. Sam plays lacrosse, and of the four probably had the least interest in the military. I sensed he was here for the pizza, which — whether he knew it or not — means he’s already qualified for E-4 Mafia status. I was glad to have Sam as our group skeptic, and he had a good idea what the Marines are about.
“I think it’s, like, a mix between the Air Force, Navy and Army,” he said, a description that an average Marine would probably admit is about right.
Isaiah plays lacrosse and is on track for college. He has an uncle who was once in the Marines, and because of his stories, he said, “I kind of see it as like a harder, more strict Army,” a description that an average Marine would probably commission as a tattoo.
Then we watched the video.
Isaiah said, “It looks kind of like a video game.”
Jack said he liked the video’s quick cuts and fast pacing. Both Jack and Isaiah agreed it kept their attention, though Sam said it didn’t “grab” his.
Colin seemed a bit more into it. Colin plays baseball and has started thinking about the Naval Academy for college after a coach from the school scouted one of his games.
“It definitely showed the variety of what you can do,” he said. “There were like guys jumping out of helicopters and then it clipped to a guy running through a snowstorm. And then spinning a weapon around. I don’t know, just a bad ass on the move all the time.”
Just a bad ass on the move all the time. Y’all may have to call that tattoo guy back.
Jack zeroed in on what the military might call all-domain ops but he just thought were cool. “You see the aircraft warfare, you see the ground warfare, you see them helping somebody as well. It shows a lot of aspects of whatever they do.”
Colin, though, also sensed things unseen: “They’re trying to make it seem cool as well, obviously. I feel like there’s parts of the Marine Corps that are not like that. They’re trying to showcase the most exciting parts of it.”
So I asked: what is “Made For This” not showing you about life as a Marine?
Each had an answer for that.
Isaiah: “Paperwork.”
Jack. “Boot camp.”
Colin: “Sitting around doing nothing.”
Suddenly I was starting to think these four knew more about enlisting than I did when I joined.
Finally, I asked each for one image or idea that the ad left in their mind.
Jack repeated the ad’s tagline: “You don’t join the Marines, you become one,” to which Isaiah said, “I was gonna say that!”
All four grinned and agreed that was a good line.
Sam: “In every single clip there were more than four people. I think that’s trying to show teamwork.”
Again, nods all the way around: teamwork was a winner.
Colin: “They showed a lot of explosions and gunfire and part of that I think Is going to go over some people’s heads, is that, like, that means you could die.”
More nods all around. Dying, surprisingly, was also a winner.
Then I asked if they felt like they could relate to the on-screen Marines as peers.
Jack: “They, like, had a bunch of people with their faces covered and you couldn’t really see skin tone, like, diversity. It could be anybody under there.”
Isaiah: “They definitely look younger, like under 20s and teenage years.”
Colin: “They look like studs.”
Sam: “They threw them in the best-looking outfits on purpose. The winter gear, I think they purposely threw that in and then the blues and stuff.”
Before moving on, I asked each: On a scale of 1 to 10 — 10 is ready to enlist on their 18th birthday, 1 is no chance ever — where they stood.
Isaiah was a 5, Jack and Sam were 4s. Colin had been moved by “Made For This,” from a 5 up to a “6.1.”
‘Shifting Threats’
We then moved on to “Shifting Threats,” which debuted two years ago and is very different than “Made For This.” The ad depicts a battlefield of apocalyptic scenes and Marines riding, flying and running into it using every high-tech system the service currently owns and some they don’t. There are MV-22 Ospreys, drone swarms, electromagnetic pulse weapons, HIMAR rockets and F-35s firing anti-ship missiles.
It’s basically Force Design 2030 in CGI form with, again, orchestra music. There’s no sign of dress blues or marching in line until the final seconds.
But how would it hit our panel?
Isaiah: “It was kind of more directed towards, like, ‘come help your country. Come fight for your country.’
Colin: “It was a lot more unrealistic. I don’t see Manhattan exploding anytime soon, right? And then the forest turning into a bunch of drones.”
Sam: “It definitely had my attention, but at the same time I really didn’t know what it was they were trying to get me to think. It was just, like, a bunch of explosions. Like the first scene, all the buildings fell down.”
Isaiah: “Everything is coming to an end if you don’t come to protect it.”
Jack: “It didn’t look like I fit in. But if you go there, you could learn to do this.”
Colin: “The first one I feel like was like, ‘you’re missing out if you don’t do this.’ The second was like, ‘we need you to do this.’”
But not all recruiting ads have deep messages. Some just have awesome lava monsters.
‘Rite of Passage’
With the two ads for today’s Corps behind us, it was time to hit these kids with the Oldest of the Old School, the Grand Daddy of them All, the final boss of Recruiting Ads:
“Rite of Passage,” a.k.a, ‘The one where he fights the lava monster.’
Or maybe a lava monster. Either way, its an ad that has nothing to do with force structure or drone swarms and everything to do with fire-swords, iron-spiked arenas and lava monsters.
Released in 1998, “Rite of Passage” is so prominent in Marine mythology that it got its own scene in Generation Kill, the book and TV series based on a platoon of Recon Marines fighting in the opening days of the Iraq war.
“That got so many guys,” says the wise-cracking Cpl. Josh Ray Person as he pilots his squad’s Humvee. “Now look at us!”
But it didn’t get our panel of teenagers.
After watching the Marine slay the lava monster and transform into dress blues, our group mostly just stared for a few silent seconds.
Finally, Colin said: “That was something.”
Sam tried to recount what he’d just seen: “There was climbing up a tower and it was, like, spinning around and stuff with spikes. He got, like, a sword and slayed a dragon or something.”
Lava monster, Sam. It’s a lava monster.
Isaiah cut to the chase: “If I have to do that in the Marines, I don’t want to do it.”
Jack delivered maybe the harshest review: “It reminded me of cheesy ’80s movies.”
Don’t misunderstand — the boys got it.
“You have to do, like, hard stuff but at a certain point, it’ll be worth it,” said Isaiah. Bingo!
“I understand the message,” said Colin. “I don’t know, it was cheesy. I thought it was funny.”
This new generation… they just don’t appreciate tradition.