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September 23, 2003

Auditors question effectiveness of recruitment spending

By Rick Maze
Times staff writer


The Defense Department has promised congressional auditors it will try to come up with a way to measure the effectiveness of recruit advertising.
The promise comes as a result of a General Accounting Office report issued Monday, which says the Pentagon is spending about $1,900 per recruit on advertising — three times as much as in 1998 — without knowing if this is actually helping recruiting.

Charles Abell, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a written response to the report that defense officials will set a strategic framework for recruiting to monitor results and to allocate spending if changes are needed.

The review will first look at whether advertising increases awareness of the military and, as a result, a greater likelihood to serve, Abell said.

While the services had recruiting problems in the late 1990s, they have been meeting their goals in recent years. But they have resisted efforts by Congress to cut the advertising budget because of concerns that such a move would hurt future recruiting efforts.

The Defense Department will spend about $592 million this year on advertising, part of a total $1 billion recruiting budget. When all spending is counted, the services are paying about $13,300 per recruit to get about 200,000 people a year to enlist in the military.

The report, however, doesn’t offer much help because auditors said the Defense Department simply doesn’t know whether spending more on advertising has helped. The report says measuring the impact of advertising “is inherently difficult, especially for a major life decision such as joining the military” and notes that private-sector businesses have the same problem.

Because it cannot measure the impact of advertising, congressional auditors said it is impossible for the Defense Department to know if it is allocating its money properly.

Part of the reason why the Defense Department doesn’t know the effectiveness of advertising is there is no central management with each service, and in some cases the individual reserve components, when it comes to managing their recruiting budgets. Letting the services go their own way is part of what auditors called allowing each branch of the military to market its own “brand” of military service.

The report says defense officials are reluctant to get too involved “because of a concern about appearing to micromanage the successful recruiting programs of the active and reserve components.”

Auditors said they understand DoD’s concerns. “Their sensitivity is warranted,” the report says. “The active and reserve components tend to guard their independence, seeking to maintain their ‘brand’ and arguing that the current decentralized structure allows them to be more responsible to their individual needs.”

There are plans under way to change this with a DoD-led campaign aimed at convincing parents, teachers and other adults about why entering the military is a good move for teenagers over whom they might have influence.

Advertising money is spent in a variety of ways, the report says. The services buy traditional ads on television, radio and print. They advertise on the Internet, sponsor sports teams and have various promotions.

There is a general philosophy in how advertising it believed to influence someone to enlist, the report says. National advertising is aimed at making people aware of the military, while direct mail, special promotions and Web sites run by each service are aimed at providing more detailed information and getting potential recruits to contact a recruiter.

Overall, there has been a 98-percent increase in advertising from 1998 to 2003, the report says, but there have been big differences among the services.

The Marine Corps, for example, has had a 56-percent increase for active forces and 3-percent decrease in advertising for the Marine Corps Reserve.

The Air Force is at the other end of the scale, with a 395-percent increase for the active force, along with a 193-percent increase in advertising for the Air Force Reserve and a 31-percent increase for the Air National Guard.

The Army’s advertising budget increased by 73 percent for the active force, 198 percent for the Army Reserve and 108 percent for the Army National Guard.

In the Navy, advertising for the active force increased by 41 percent but increased by 208 percent for the Naval Reserve.

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