ABSTRACT
In 1973, in the wake of the Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and anti-war movements, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) overhauled its recruitment strategy from a partly conscripted military to an ‘all-volunteer’ force. To meet recruitment goals, DOD officials increased the US army’s budget for advertising and publicity. Army advertisements rebranded military service to dazzle audiences with patriotic imagery depicting the benefits of enlistment. The corresponding copy incorporated pro-equality discourses that had been popularised through social movement rhetoric. Advertisements positioned service itself as a meritocratic utopia, in which one’s demographic status as a racial or ethnic minority or woman of any racial or ethnic background would not be a barrier to success and fulfilment. To do so, advertisements co-opted the language of social movements and targeted racial and ethnic minorities as well as women more so than ever before. This chapter uses archival records, including advertising tear sheets, internal advertising agency memos, transcripts from oral history interviews, and other materials held within the corporate archives of N. W. Ayer & Son, the advertising firm that worked for the Army, to examine the promise of merit in selling military enlistment to diverse audiences in the 1970s.
