The Armed Services have turned to social media in recent years to promote recruitment. Yet they’re still missing sign-up goals by the thousands. The Government Accountability Office finds, the target Generation Z has a declining attitude about the military. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin gets more now from the GAO’s director of defense capabilities and management, Alissa Czyz.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin And tell us what we’re looking at here, because all we hear from all of the armed forces is how they use Instagram or X, maybe in different social media channels to try to, I guess, look cool and appealing to the people they need to recruit, which by definition is all Generation Z.

Alissa Czyz Right. So as we know, young people like digital media, so Facebook, X, Instagram, all of these applications and apps that they’re using now. So DoD has recognized that they need to go digital as well. So they are sinking a lot of their advertising dollars into social media and digital media to try to reach that Generation Z.

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Tom Temin Yeah, the days are long gone when you could advertise on Petticoat Junction. The mass television audiences just aren’t there anymore.

Alissa Czyz Right. Everybody’s online now. And so DoD is trying to get online as well.

Tom Temin And what did you find about these efforts? Because they have missed recruiting goals now fairly consistently for several years.

Alissa Czyz So we did find that all of the services do have robust digital media campaigns. They’re all on these various platforms. They also train their recruiters to use their own social media to try to reach recruits. A lot of them employ strategies like telling personal stories of service members. So highlighting service members, doing interesting work overseas or work that has an impact in trying to reach young people that way with an emotional connection or storytelling. So they’ve all been focused on this for several years now and are spending quite a bit of money, about $2 billion a year on these efforts.

Tom Temin Right. And so what has been the result of the efforts then?

Alissa Czyz So most of the services are still missing their recruiting goals only Space Force, which is very small. And the Marines were able to meet their recruiting goals last year. The other services, particularly the Army, missed their goals by tens of thousand. So there is more work to do. So our report points out that there are some things that DoD could do related to digital marketing to try to increase how many folks that they’re getting to actually enlist as a result of their efforts.

Tom Temin Because it’s pretty hard to tie a given enlistment with the ways that we’re reaching that person, because it might have been multiple ways that person was reached with a military message.

Alissa Czyz Right. But there are some ways. The big advertising firms have these, criteria that they use. They use statistical modeling and they have an evaluation framework and other things to try to tie their advertising dollars right to outcomes. And DoD can do that as well. And the services are doing that to varying degrees. But we found that all but the Army could do a better job of kind of putting out measures to see how well they’re getting toward their goals and what they might need to change.

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Tom Temin So is the goal of their social media activity to directly get recruits or is it to change public opinion, if you will, of Generation Z towards the military?

Alissa Czyz It’s a little bit of both. So they have different phases that they’re focused on. One is just awareness of the military and different career fields. Some of them have sort of online quizzes people can take to see what career field they might be interested in if they joined a particular service. And then they have kind of an engagement area where they they want folks to come to recruiting events. So they advertise those on digital media as well. And then their third phase is lead generation. So how much of their efforts are translating into people actually giving them their contact information or going to a recruiter office or actually signing up to enlist?

Tom Temin And you mentioned the Army does have pretty good metrics in place. They have a special office, I think it’s in Chicago where there is a general level officer assigned to social media, recruiting and marketing.

Alissa Czyz Right. And the Army is the largest service, and they’re very focused on this. So they do have some things in place. They also have a risk management framework that we point out, as do some of the other services too, because what can go wrong on digital media as well too? It’s a little riskier than traditional media too. So having that risk management framework in place to be able to kind of deal with crises communications or pull things off quickly if needed is really important as well.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Alissa Czyz she’s director of defense capabilities and management at the Government Accountability Office. And let’s go into that risk management idea a little bit more, because you don’t think of risk management necessarily as a function connected to social media marketing. But is one of the dangers that the Army or the Air Force will put up something and then 10,000 goofballs on Reddit will turn it into some kind of a whatever they do on Reddit and these different places.

Alissa Czyz Yes, that is the concern, or people will leave inflammatory comments. Some that may incite violence. The Army actually had a situation a couple of years ago where they had a campaign and an actor who was kind of the face of the campaign and the actor was arrested on a domestic violence charge. And they needed to pull that really quickly. And they were able to do so pretty effectively because they had kind of a risk management framework in place. So it’s really important.

Tom Temin And when you just get these flaming anonymous, of course, always comments from these different groups that comment and anybody can comment on any social media comment. That’s what makes it social, I guess. That’s part of the risk management also, if something is engendering this kind of response, you want to kill that off in some way.

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Alissa Czyz Yes. And they need to have guidance on how to deal with those situations.

Tom Temin So there must be some good guidance or good practices available from industry because companies deal with this all the time also.

Alissa Czyz There are. So there are advertising best practices and most of the services are following those. Again, the biggest issue we saw was, with the exception of the Army, of not being able to kind of measure their progress toward their recruiting goals as a result of digital marketing.

Tom Temin All right. So you’ve got a pretty substantial list of recommendations for the secretary of the Air Force, of the Navy, of the Army. This is all high level recommendations. What should these folks be doing?

Alissa Czyz All of our recommendations are really basic advertising recommendations. We mentioned that the Air Force does not have a risk management framework in place. We think that they need to have that strategy so they can respond quickly if needed to a potential situation. And then all of the services that the Army do need to put measures in place. So they’re tracking how their efforts are meeting or not meeting their goals. And then kind of a third issue we found in the report, too, was challenges with funding. And so a lot of times advertising needs to be paid for well in advance. And DoD’s budget cycle does not allow for that. And they get their money and a lot of continuing resolutions can complicate things there, too. So having better processes so they can kind of informed buys and be able to get those spots sooner is important for them as well.

Tom Temin And do they also still do traditional media advertising? The Army?

Alissa Czyz They do. They target large sporting events and those types of things. So they are doing traditional as well as digital media, but they are very focused on digital media, because that’s where Generation Z is focused.

Tom Temin Right. And your report does mention that, was this a GAO survey or other studies that you did a study of showing that Generation Z doesn’t have an optimal attitude toward the military?

Alissa Czyz That was a DoD survey found that only 35% of Generation Z had a favorable view of the military.

Tom Temin Right. So if only 35% of the recruiting generation and 50% of the generation is ineligible to serve for one reason or another, it seems like they’re chasing a tinier and tinier sliver just to keep up their basic recruitment goals.

Alissa Czyz It is very challenging for them. And so that’s why they’re trying to get on these various platforms, trying to deploy these strategies like storytelling, highlighting different kind of career fields, fiber stem related engineering fields that folks can go into in the military to try to entice young people to join.

Tom Temin But it seems almost as if they’re paddling against larger societal currents where the education system, the higher education system, if it mentions the military, it’s probably in a negative way if it mentions it at all. Or is that just my perception?

Alissa Czyz It is challenging. DoD’s own survey found that it’s not just the military. There is a general distrust among young people of institutions in general. So the military does fall prey to that as well.

Tom Temin And your recommendations pretty much did they respond? And what do they say?

Alissa Czyz They agreed with all of the recommendations. The Army wanted to move out and make some changes to their budget processes. Our recommendation was to analyze the pros and cons of that and then make changes too. But they generally agreed with all of our recommendations.

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