Be All You Can Be — John Carstens

The challenges are both plentiful and formidable. Young Americans have historically low interest in serving in the military. They’re an exceptionally sedentary generation, so only a small percentage even qualify. And they score low on measures of self-efficacy, meaning they have little faith in their own ability to succeed.

At Team DDB, the nine-agency monster we built for the U.S. Army, we created a bunch of campaigns in the first few years of the relationship. But this was the big one: the launch of a 20-year, enterprise-wide brand positioning. People often assume the Army ordered us to bring back “Be All You Can Be,” but in fact we had to make a pretty strenuous argument to put it in the running.

Good thing we prevailed, because it’s helped reverse years of declining numbers. As of this writing, Army recruitment is at its highest level in 15 years.

If you remember the 1980s version of the campaign, you’ll notice we also reinterpreted the main melody from the original jingle. This next one has no music, but those notes are subtly embedded in the sound design. Hear ‘em?

Most of our work is precisely targeted to eligible young adults, but this campaign went broader to include parents, the Army community, and policy makers. The films appeared in theaters, in stadiums, and on your phone. Custom media partnerships included a career fair with Complex, soldier stories with XXL, an appearance on The Voice, and “The Impossible Shot,” our NCAA activation. We bombarded the unwitting public with VR experiences, messages on every out-of-home surface for purchase, and hundreds of images from one of our favorite photographers. And we pulled it all through the website and email program.

As we liked to say: “It’s time to reintroduce America to its Army.”

The last time the Army had updated its visual identity was almost two decades ago—before smartphones and social media as we know them. We took a beautifully utilitarian approach to create this massive system for a highly matrixed, 1.4-million person organization. The stakes were high:

Something you may have seen: this all started with a pair of epic films featuring a celebrity narrator walking through dramatic moments in Army history. Audiences were thrilled, and so was the client. If you get the password, see if you can figure out why we had to pull them. (Deep sigh.)