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NEWS | March 25, 2008

Air Guard looks inward for new recruiting campaign

By Tech. Sgt. Mike R. Smith National Guard Bureau

ARLINGTON, Va. - A new Air National Guard recruiting campaign that uses Guardmembers to advertise the "unique" opportunities in the Air Guard will kick off April 4 with the launch of a new recruiting Web site.

It will continue throughout the year with ads for theaters, radio, television, magazines and newspapers.

Getting the public interested in the Air Guard and learning its story is the main goal of the campaign, said recruiting and retention officials here.

"What we would like to do is introduce a robust advertising campaign and get our story out and let people know who we are, what we do and what we are all about," said Lt. Col. Randy Johnson, chief of Air Guard Recruiting and Retention.

The Air Guard has not had a large, formal campaign in nearly 10 years, said Johnson. In that time, it has changed its logo and changed its slogan to "Guarding America, Defending Freedom." Both will continue through the new campaign.

Johnson said they are using in-house talent at the states, including a group of four Airmen at the Vermont Air Guard's 158th Fighter Wing they call "Studio 158", to produce the ads. Using their own designers, he said, allows Recruiting and Retention to redirect funds previously spent on marketing agencies. The savings will be used to purchase additional advertising space.

"We want to build an emotional attachment to what the Air Guard means and its offerings of specific part-time jobs in air and space with full-time benefits," said Master Sgt. Rob Trubia, Studio 158's creative director.

By employing the Air Guard's talent, Trubia said they will produce products for a fraction of the cost of contracting the work out.

"We can make the same professional products a design agency would produce," he said.

The team's newly-designed Web site,  www.GoANG.com, connects potential recruits to the Air Guard's nearly 550 recruiters through an interactive homepage. There, viewers can chat with recruiting advisors through instant messaging. A hyperlinked map provides locations, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of local recruiting offices. In addition, the Web site has online games, videos and photographs of Air Guard careers, aircraft and missions.

With the Web site redesigned, Trubia's team will develop the Air Guard's ads. He said the team will use real Air Guard members in the ads to help identify what is unique and different about the branch.

Although the Air Guard will market itself nationally, officials said they will run a higher percentage of the ads in undermanned states to achieve unit end-strength goals. Johnson said the campaign will expand if additional funding is received.

The Air Guard's current end-strength goal is 106,700 Airmen, and it has missed its goals for the last six years.

"The Air Guard used to be able to make end-strength goals, year after year, and people knew about the Air Guard and where they were," said Johnson.

Johnson explained that part of the reason for the Air Guard's identity loss is that their demographic of qualified recruits changed significantly.

"There have also been many changes [in the Air Guard] that have taken place over the past years," said Johnson, who included Base Realignment and Closure, Total Force Initiatives and the Air Guard's mission reset as the forces behind those changes.

Johnson said the new campaign will get some strength from the Air Force's recent "Above All" campaign, which uses a statement in its ads similar to the Air Guard's "Guarding America, Defending Freedom" slogan.

But recruiting officials here said they hope to capitalize more upon the Air Guard's ability to offer recruits specific jobs at community-based units as opposed to broader active-duty offerings.

"We have a fantastic product that we are offering out there," said Johnson. "But we have had an inability to get that out. If we get smart about using the resources available, we are going to get our message out there and accomplish the goals we need to."

 

 

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