Sailor focus groups helped develop new slogan - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Sailor focus groups helped develop new slogan

If you’re one of the sailors who heard the Navy’s new advertising slogan, “America’s Navy: A global force for good,” and wondered where it came from — take a look around.

That was the word from officials with Navy Recruiting Command and the Navy’s advertising agency, Campbell-Ewald, who said that “global force for good” came straight from today’s sailors and the Navy’s own maritime strategy, not a Madison Avenue boardroom or the cartoon “Super Friends,” as some people joked.

“We had many, many focus groups with the Navy to outline all of this,” said Jennifer Monaghan, head of the Navy’s account with Detroit-based Campbell-Ewald. “People have said, ‘Did we not poll the fleet?’ Yes. The fleet came up with this.”

And yet, in the weeks since the Navy unveiled “global force for good” in late September, most of the 80-some readers who contacted Navy Times to give their opinion about the Navy’s campaign have been skeptical, at best.

“If you want to bring sailors into this organization, then tell them what we do. Tell them about the trips overseas, tell them about the chance to advance to upper management, tell them how they can become ambassadors for the country. This new slogan leaves a lot to be desired,” Information Systems Technician 1st Class (SW/AW) Christopher Hooper said.

In the face of that resistance, Recruiting Command and Campbell-Ewald officials spoke with Navy Times reporters and editors to explain how and why “global force for good” was created.

Over the past few years, the Navy’s image had fallen into bad shape in the crowded advertising marketplace, Monaghan said. A 2004 Gallup poll found that Americans considered the Navy the least prestigious of the four Defense Department military services, and other surveys turned up findings that were even worse.

“Most people didn’t have any kind of understanding or knowledge about the Navy, or even what the Navy does — for crying out loud, some people didn’t even know we still have a Navy,” she said. “We needed to start at the beginning and define for people what the Navy does.”

So for a new campaign to replace 2001’s “Accelerate your life,” Campbell-Ewald and Recruiting Command decided they needed to remind Americans that the Navy existed, tell them what it did, make young people want to join it and excite its current members enough to talk it up to potential recruits. Therefore, they said, this goes beyond a recruiting campaign.

On top of all that, the campaign also had to appeal to “influencers” — parents, teachers and older siblings who can tip the scales for a would-be recruit, said Senior Chief Mass Communications Specialist (EXW) Tom Jones, a spokesman for Recruiting Command.

It was a very broad slate of goals for a single advertising campaign, acknowledged Cmdr. Flex Plexico, another spokesman for Recruiting Command, but he said the Navy was confident it would work.

In days-long workshops with Campbell-Ewald’s researchers, sailors were asked to come up with words and phrases that defined what they did in the Navy. The sessions were kicked off by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, who urged the sailors to use the tenets of the maritime strategy.

Based on what the workshop participants came up with, Campbell-Ewald had three concepts for a new Navy campaign, Monaghan said. Besides “global force,” the other two were: “Until the world’s a perfect place, there’s the U.S. Navy;” and “The most important job in the world.” (“Put another way, the world’s full of bad guys and we need someone to protect us,” Monaghan said.)

“A global force for good” best distilled the concepts about global presence, sea control, humanitarian missions and the other pillars of the maritime strategy, she said. “America’s Navy” — as opposed to just “Navy” or “U.S. Navy” — was chosen for a general audience.

“The brand had to be understood by the American people. Since people didn’t know we had a Navy or what they do, we needed to make it very clear so the American people would understand what the Navy does.”

Monaghan, Jones and Plexico urged sailors to watch for more print ads and commercials in the “global force for good” campaign, and said they were confident more people would appreciate it after thinking over what it meant.

“When you enlighten people to the entire campaign, they go, ‘Oh, wow, got it,’” Monaghan said.

Still, some Navy Times readers, such as Northrop Grumman contractor Jill Zimmerman, said that if a slogan wasn’t immediately understandable, it wasn’t working.

“If you have to keep defending and explaining it, then you have really missed your mark,” she said.

What’s with that Icon?

Officials with Navy Recruiting Command and the Navy’s advertiser, Campbell-Ewald, said they wanted to create a Navy-looking icon that represented officers, chiefs and sailors.

Recruiting Command spokesman Cmdr. Flex Plexico said the “America’s Navy” graphic also evokes the symbol worn by recruiters, an eagle holding an anchor either with narrow arms, or apparently tilted on its side.

Another graphic element of the campaign, the Goode Homolosine-projection map, was included to suggest the “global” part of the force for good, officials said. It has stars in the locations of Navy bases and other points of interest around the world.