soldier.” Three pictures accompany the text: a row of parachutists trailing behind an airplane; a
closer shot of a few parachutes, and one parachutists; and the parachutist, now on the ground in a
dress uniform, with the caption “Cpl. Patricia Burdette. Age 23. Parachute Rigger.” In this ad,
the soldier just happens to be a woman. As in the 1985 ad with Michelle Kowalski, there are no
textual references to her femaleness, but unlike the earlier ad, the picture of her face doesn’t
dominate the page, so the casual reader might just see an Army ad with parachutes, without
really noticing the soldier’s sex.
By the end of the decade, the Army, along with the Navy and Air Force, was struggling
to meet recruiting quotas. In fiscal year 1999, the post-Cold War troop level reductions, which
had masked recruiting problems from 1993 to 1998, came to an end. The Army had failed to
meet recruiting missions, but these failures were “forgiven” in terms of mission requirement
numbers by applying them to the annual reductions required by the drawdown (Hauk and Parlier,
2000). The active military strength of the AVF peaked in fiscal year 1987 at 2.174 million
(Dorn, 1996: 13). In 1989 there were 2.13 million active duty service members; in 1999, there
were 1.36 million, a drop of 36 percent (Myers, 1999). That year, the Army’s recruiting goal
was 74,500 soldiers; it fell short by 6,290.
In January 2001, the Army radically altered its public face when it retired “Be All You
Can Be” and rolled out a new advertising campaign, created by Leo Burnett USA, built around
the slogan, “An Army of One.” The Army hoped to counter the perceptions of young people that
soldiers are, as an Army public relations official put it, “nameless, faceless people in green
uniforms crawling through mud” (Leo, 2001:13). The Army wanted to encourage the idea that
young people will have the chance to be a part of something larger than themselves, while still
retaining their individualism. In order to enhance its brand identity, the Army also created a new
logo, a white star outlined in gold and black.
In the debut TV advertisement, a soldier jogs in the desert as the voiceover narrates:
I am an army of one. Even though there are 1,045,690 soldiers just like me, I am my
own force. With technology, with support, with training, who I am has become better
than who I was. And I’ll be the first to tell you the might of the US Army doesn’t lie in
numbers. It lies in me, Corporal Richard Lovett. I am an army of one, and you can see
my strength.
The ads appeared on the NBC sitcom “Friends,” Fox’s “The Simpsons,” and WB’s
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” as well as on cable stations MTV and Comedy Central. The bulk of
the Army’s TV advertising had traditionally been broadcast during sporting events, and during
14
Convention