Gen Zers, born between 1997 and 2012, came into a fast-changing and sometimes uncertain world, but as they have reached adulthood this decade, they’ve made one thing clear: they don’t want to be stuck in a 9-to-5 grind.
And the Army thinks they have an “uncommon” job for them.
Like millennials, Gen Z can’t afford to buy a house or have human children so they opt for cats and dogs and have numerous side hustles. They are always online, inundated by new technology but still yearn for the past and sometimes swear off smartphones altogether.
They want flexible careers and to feel like what they’re doing matters.
So the Army heard that and said: come join the National Guard.
To reach them, the service has produced a new marketing series titled “Uncommon Is Calling,” pitching the National Guard as a chance for an “uncommon” life where one day you can be punching numbers into a corporate spreadsheet and the next day flying a Black Hawk helicopter on a search and rescue mission, responding to a town devastated by a flood or shipping off to a combat zone.
“Who are you not to be uncommon? Who are you not to be one in a million? 100 million?” the ad’s narrator asks. “Your day job is what you do, but it doesn’t define you. In a world of common, it might.”
The commercial ends by promising that a job with the National Guard will help “discover the most uncommon time of your life.”
Brig. Gen. Antoinette Gant, chief of Army enterprise marketing told Task & Purpose that the commercial is marketing a career and lifestyle that Gen Zers want: to be entrepreneurial and have multiple gigs or a job with a side hustle and “do something that’s greater than just think about themselves.”
Defining and recruiting Gen Z
The commercials are the Army’s latest pitch to older teenagers and younger 20-somethings in Gen Z, a group that the service has historically had trouble recruiting, leading to years of missed recruiting goals. When the service announced that it hit its 2024 recruiting goals, officials said that the average age of recruits was skewing older.
Gant cited a McKinsey & Company study which found that a quarter of 18-to-24 year olds were more likely to work multiple jobs, compared to 16% of all workers. The study also found that more than half were likely to be doing independent or freelance work compared to 36% of all workers. An Upwork Research Institute survey revealed that 62% of Gen Z respondents said they chose flexible careers “to be able to pursue work they are passionate about or find meaningful.”
“You can do this while also doing something else. You don’t just have to do your regular job,” Gant said. “Being in the Army National Guard allows them the opportunity to be able to do that.”
The commercial also hits a nerve at the heart of Gen Z’s psychology: hating anything “common,” or in this case a rigid, corporate-style job. A study from Credit Karma found that 60% of Gen Z respondents said that 9-to-5 jobs are “soul-sucking” and that 43% indicated they have no desire to work one.
“They want to do something outside of ‘OK, I do this on a regular basis,’ but then there’s something else that I can do and that still gives me this feeling of doing something greater than myself,” Gant said.
The commercial tows the line of the National Guard offering a unique experience while not completely going off into the unknown, something Gen Z knows quite well. I mean, it’s a generation whose identity is defined by a world of unprecedented politics, record-breaking natural disasters, and exponential advances in technology. The little semblance of normalcy Gen Z can hold on to is commiserating online and relating to other humans on this big floating rock in space through TikToks.
The ad also lists mundane tasks that any young person can relate to: “You’ll still have common days,” the narrator says, like putting off term papers, eating cold pizza out of the fridge, or overthinking a text message.
In addition to offering an “uncommon” career, the National Guard’s part-time and state-focused mission may offer a balance Gen Z craves, Gant said, because they still want to be “close to home.” Gant said the pandemic kept many Gen Zers from finding a job, and forced them to stay at home where they grew closer with their families.
“We find that many of this generation, when they were having trouble finding a job, then what did they do? They kind of stayed in the basement of their parents’ house,” she said. “So now saying ‘wow, this allows me to still be able to do something I’m passionate about or trying something different, but then also having the comfort of knowing that my family is right here as well.’”
The commercial is produced in black and white which Gant said helps viewers focus on the message versus being distracted by the images that they’re seeing — a production decision made to capture an audience that wants to get right to the point. Research shows that Gen Z really values authenticity.
“These are realistic stories of careers or things that individuals that are in the Army National Guard are doing,” Gant said. “If it’s authentic and actually shows what they’re truly doing, then hopefully this will be an avenue that would really resonate with that Gen Z audience.”
The series launched Monday. About 80% of the campaign will run on streaming and digital services with 20% on traditional television. “Uncommon is Calling” commercials on MAX, CBS, ESPN, YouTube, Meta, Reddit, or LinkedIn.
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