- An Omnicom team led by DDB last year won the US Army's ad business, covering an estimated $4 billion over 10 years.
- Business Insider got the full pitch deck that won the account.
- DDB's first multi-media campaign is set to launch in the coming weeks on platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
- The winning pitch includes personalized social media videos targeting high-schoolers, ads featuring headshots of new recruits, and a campaign starring soldiers' parents as influencers.
- It also proposed the Army run ads on publishers such as BuzzFeed, Twitch, and The Washington Post.
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Holding company giant Omnicom's Team DDB last November won the US Army's ad business after a multi-year review, covering an estimated $4 billion over 10 years. In addition to lead agency DDB, the winning group includes media shop OMD, PR firm FleishmanHillard, and multicultural agency Fluent360.
Business Insider obtained the full pitch deck that Team DDB presented to Army officials. The document is embedded in full at the bottom of this story.
Read more: The military can't get Gen Z to enlist. Here's how top Army marketers plan to fix the problem.
Omnicom pitched a variety of digital and social efforts including episodic Instagram stories and sponsored content on BuzzFeed, Twitch, and Reddit
The deck includes a wealth of proposals for its first multimedia campaign under the new tagline "Tomorrow Takes an Army," which is set to launch in the coming weeks across platforms including Instagram and Facebook and youth-oriented media outlets.
The Army's head of marketing, Brigadier General Alex Fink, told Business Insider his team looks to reach the elusive Gen Z with "immersive, episodic storytelling" like that featured in "72Hours." That's one of the ideas in the pitch deck and is an Instagram and YouTube video series highlighting individual missions and updating every three days.
Other potential aspects of the campaign include Facebook video ads targeting high-schoolers by name and sponsored BuzzFeed surveys that show users jobs they might get after serving in the Army.
Additional slides list Reddit, Snapchat, and gaming platform Twitch as potential destinations for sponsored content alongside traditional publishers like The Washington Post and The Houston Chronicle.
Spec ads claim soldiers could get jobs at tech companies like Github and LinkedIn
The deck lists Microsoft, GE, Tesla, and Amazon among Omnicom's potential partners on the Army account. It also implies that service in the armed forces could lead to jobs at "great companies" like Google, Facebook, and Apple.
Omnicom proposed an unbranded campaign called TTAA, or Operational Thunderbolt, that would attract recruits by promoting high-skill jobs at tech companies including Github, Careerbuilder, and LinkedIn.
Spec ads highlight high-tech Army initiatives like "real life Iron Man suits" as well as work in the solar and wind power industries and a proposed Lab of Tomorrow, described as "an interactive, multi-sensory futuristic dome, highlighting the innovation and technology of the US Army."
New campaign has tagline "Tomorrow Takes an Army" and features ads starring recruits and proud parents as influencers
The deck even proposes enlisting soldiers' parents as influencers who create sponsored blogs and content on goarmy.com to position membership in the Army as a family decision.
Another proposal involves creating a database of headshots from every new recruit to target people with personalized ads across platforms including social, digital, and even highway billboards.
The agency proposed making a big shift into online video, away from linear TV
Omnicom pitched significantly cutting the Army's linear TV spend in favor of online video, search, social, and influencer content. Another slide describes this strategy as "mobile to the core," though TV ads would still make up the majority of the Army's annual paid media budget of about $100 million.
Omnicom also proposed using behavioral data to shift its buys from segments to individuals, with potential buys on platforms such as Spotify, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, travel hubs like TripAdvisor, online job sites for major employers like Walmart, and publishers including ESPN and TMZ.
In terms of hyper-targeting, Omnicom proposed using search engine data to identify people who recently bought test prep books or searched for jobs in healthcare.
Fink told Business Insider that Army will hold the agencies more accountable by attaching goals to every individual budget item. Another slide identifies some of the numbers Omnicom would be expected to deliver.
The new campaign's key goal is to make the US Army more relevant to young Americans
The pitch deck opens with a bold thesis of "reverence vs. relevance" and cites surveys finding that, while most Americans have great respect for the Army, they know little about it, do not find it relevant to their lives, and have no interest in enrolling.
That sentiment was echoed by Army officials who told Business Insider that this irrelevance, combined with a low unemployment economy, is to blame for the military's recent recruitment struggles.
The pitch emphasizes that the military is about "more than combat and war," with soldiers enlisting to expand their career options rather than "as a last resort."
Omnicom encouraged a particular focus on recruiting women, with additional spec ads highlighting diversity efforts amid emotional appeals to protect the US from outside threats and "hate."
The Federal Procurement Database lists the minimum value of Omnicom's contract at about $128 million over a 10-year period, but according to a Department of Defense statement, the company could earn significantly more depending on how many projects the Army assigns.
Read the full pitch deck below.
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