Branching out Army, in need of recruits, focusing on left-leaning cities
SEATTLE — Army recruiters in Seattle can earn a Friday off for each new soldier they enlist. But in Seattle — a city with a thriving tech industry and a long history of anti-war protests — the recruiters haven’t gotten many long weekends.
“It’s no secret we’re a little behind,” Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Vargas, who heads the city’s only recruiting station, told four recruiters at a recent morning pep talk. With a week left in the month, he wrote the station’s goal — five recruits — on a white board, and then the current tally: two.
“What do we need to make mission?” he asked.
One recruiter responded with a shrug, “A miracle.”
The Army is not quite counting on miracles, but after falling 6,500 soldiers short of its goal nationwide in 2018, it is trying a new strategy.
Rather than focus on more conservative regions of the country that traditionally fill the ranks, the Army plans a big push in 22 leftleaning cities, including Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, where relatively few recruits have signed up.
“We want to go into Boston, Pittsburgh, Kansas City,” said Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, the head of Army Recruiting Command. “These are places with a large number of youth who just don’t know what the military is about.”
The pitch they have used for years— playing down combat and emphasizing job training and education benefits— can work well when civilian opportunities are scarce. But it is a tough sell these days in Seattle, where jobs are plentiful and the local minimum wage of $15 an hour beats the base pay for privates, corporals or specialists.
Instead, Muth said, the Army wants to frame enlistment as a patriotic detour for motivated young adults who might otherwise be bound for a corporate cubicle — a detour that promises a chance for public service, travel and adventure.
For decades, Army recruiting has relied disproportionately on a swath of the country stretching from Virginia through the South to Texas, where many military bases are found and many families have traditions of service. Young people there enlist at two to three times the rate of other regions.
By contrast, in the big metropolitan areas of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, young people are less likely to have a parent, teacher or coach who served in the military, which can be a major factor in deciding to enlist.
And in those regions, many high schools openly discourage recruiters from interacting with students.
Parents can be just as leery. “They say ‘Thank you for your service, but stay away from my kid,”’ said Capt. Carlos Semidey, the Seattle recruiters’ company commander.
So the Army has begun redirecting its marketing toward urbanites and suburbanites who are eager for excitement. Out went the Army’s sponsorship of a drag-racing team; in are teams of soldiers who compete in mixed martial arts, Crossfit, and competitive video gaming, or e-sports.
Ads on network sports broadcasts are being scaled back in favor of targeted ads on Facebook and Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming gaming platform. Recruiters will soon be required, not just encouraged, to post on Instagram.
“Kids aren’t watching network TV anymore,” Muth said. “They are not at the mall. And they don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t know. But we know they want to serve their community, so we have to start that conversation with them.”
Even those who walk in to the recruiting station are not a sure bet. Myles Pankey, 19, fit the profile of a blue-city adventure seeker, showing up in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt at the Seattle recruiting office. A year after graduating from one of the city’s top high schools, he was working construction, which paid well but bored him. Following in his accountant father’s footsteps held no appeal, he said; he wanted a challenge.
“If I were you, I’d go infantry,” Vargas told him. “There’s an $11,000 bonus right now if you can ship in a few weeks.”
They talked for more than an hour about opportunities in the Army, but Pankey said he felt pulled in many directions. His mother and father weren’t crazy about him enlisting, he said. His boss, a former Special Forces soldier, had talked up the experience, but another friend who had served in Vietnam called it a terrible idea.
None of his high school friends had joined, so he’d be going on his own. He finally told the sergeant he would wait a week before making up his mind.
“I can get a good job here, but I want to serve my country,” Pankey said on his way out. “I guess I have some thinking to do.”