Pledge Engine

Background

In 2007, the US Marine Corps wanted to push their story beyond the borders of their recruitment sites by creating more organic distribution channels. The objective was to leverage social networks to deliver a meaningful brand experience and harness the power of a distributed content model.

Idea

Teens (part of the Marines’ core target audience) place a premium on sharing their points of view. For many, their profiles on MySpace are an extension of themselves. Because of this, RMG Connect developed the Marines Pledge Engine: a robust application that invites friends, family, and future Marines to make a meaningful statement about their values. In doing so, each person creates a personalised video declaration connecting their ideals to those of the Marine Corps.

Using the engine, each user builds a statement that reflects his or her own beliefs. Users add their name to affirm their words and complete a pledge. While the engine does its work, a custom confirmation screen highlights the values that the user and the Marine Corps share. The Pledge Engine delivers a custom-edited 30-second video built on each user’s statement. Pulling from over 200 video clips, 95 phrases, and five soundtracks, the engine builds each user a personal declaration that’s true to the pledge and true to the Corps. In total, there are 750 unique pledge combinations. The immersive experience demonstrates to each individual how the values they hold relate to the values of the Marine Corps.

Results

During the first two months that the Pledge Engine was live, the Marines MySpace page averaged 7,000 visits a day. More than 7,400 people embedded their pledge within their MySpace Profile, and over 1,000 sent an email invite to a friend. All told, the Pledge Engine attracted nearly 1.4 million visits, and over 1.2 million video plays.

Target Audience

The Marine Corps’ primary recruiting audience is males, aged 17 to 24, with a high school diploma. Parents, teachers, friends, and other influencers make up an important secondary target.

Our Thoughts

There was quite a lot of talk about this in our editorial meeting. The truth is, as Churchill observed, the British and the Americans are one culture divided by a common language. The gung-ho patriotism in this is very alien to us, especially with the Iraq war still lurching from one mess to the next. But that doesn’t mean to say this isn’t brilliantly targeted communications. The people this idea was aimed at would have felt incredibly positive about the Marines at the end of the experience. Again, vertical line thinking at work, an example of direct and brand as one.