“Marines are made for this — made for the calling only warriors can answer.”
The bellowing narrative establishes a familiar aggressive tone in the Marine Corps’ newest ad, one that comes amid the military’s usual slew of philosophical shifts driving the rest of the Pentagon’s (oftentimes unpredictable) recruiting efforts.
In their latest creation, the service’s marketing team, which settled on the theme of answering the warrior’s call, once again answered a specific call of a clamoring public: just keep it simple.
The ad’s fleeting scenes feature Marines fast-roping from a helicopter into hostile jungle environs, advancing through arctic terrain as gunfire erupts, carrying out night operations and providing humanitarian aid.
Note for prospective recruits: You are unlikely to be spinning antiquated rifles alongside the Silent Drill Platoon on a ship’s flight deck in the middle of the ocean.
Marine Corps advertisements have come a long way since the halcyon marketing days of balrog slaying, medieval chessboard knights and the service’s dearth of rose garden-based promises.
But immense CGI improvements aside, the sentiment at the core of the Corps’ campaigns has remained remarkably consistent: the Marine Corps wants elite fighters.
It’s the same approach — grizzled exclusivity — the service has employed since long before the war-hardened Maj. Benson Winifred Payne quipped, “Killin’ is my business, ladies, and business is good!”
“You’ll have to earn your place among us,” the narrator says at the ad’s conclusion. “Because you don’t join the Marines — you become one.”
Dan Daly. Smedley Butler. Chesty Puller. John Basilone. ‘Rah.
Jon Simkins is the executive editor for Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
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