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25.03.2007 ~ US Army advertising...

It's no secret that the US military has been using various kid friendly publicity stunts and computer games as advertising and recruitment tools for the past number of years (think the free, UnReal powered America's Army computer game and the recent true life rendition of the 'Fuck the Police' rap song). Usually such attempts stick out like a sore thumb (or unplayable game), but this example has me scratching my head.

The following are screen grabs from the gaming news, reviews and download site gamespy.com. Naturally the site has a healthy dose of military advertising on board (gun crazy minors being the obvious candidates for use as cannon fodder (these days shouldn't we update that to IED fodder...!)) - most of which is to-the-point and visually engaging. Except this one...

It starts off compelling enough. A UH-60 blackhawk hovering with a banner that incites a user to investigate further (everyone wants to be strong, ARMY STRONG!).

So far so good, it's following all the rules of marketing that appear in that 20 minute powerpoint presentation that's doing the rounds at the moment. Mousing over the elegant '<< Roll over to expand >>' link triggers an expansion of the ad space and an animation of the blawkhawk pivoting left. True, the animation is blocky but I can't help but feel that it was a compromise made by the designer in the interest of loading speed. We're asked the soul searching question "Do you have what it take to fly a blackhawk?". Before we can begin to ponder this life altering question something strange happens. Two yellow circles appear:

The blackhawk is a replacement of the UH-1 'huey' (think every Vietnam movie you've ever seen) and is primarily a troop carrier. The blawkhawk takes self protection seriously. It was designed with all the lessons of the South East Asia war in mind, it's airframe is able to take reasonable amounts of small arms punishment with most of the vital parts (including the pilots) provided with enough armour to stop the 'light stuff'. Following the "If we shoot at them and keep their heads down they won't be shooting back at us" school of thought, the blackhawk replaced the UH-1's 550 round a minute M-60 toting door gunner with something a little more substantial - a pair of manned M134 7.62mm guns on each shoulder. The M134 is the infamous 'minigun', a rotary barrel weapon that can fire a staggering 4,000 bullets a minute (66 rounds a SECOND!) for prolonged periods of time.

Enough of the nomenclature - onto the significance of those two yellow circles! I have no idea what the original intention was, but the yellow circles clearly mark where return fire would be originate should you take decide to engage a blawkhawk (in the illustrated case above; the starboard gunner station (right most yellow circle) and the passenger cabin (left most yellow circle, usually populated with rifle carrying troops)).

Now we all know marketing can be a callous, thankless, soulless, spineless, loveless, ungodly, whoring pursuit - but on whose side are the guys behind this ad on? Are they attempting to get people into the service or expedite their egress? Just what are they trying to tell us?

...and where do I sign up?

Tags: 07, amusing, army, ffs, funny, guns, military, what.

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