Grown Up Thinking

Nearly three months after the U.S. military gave the “affirmative” for online social media use, an intriguing thing began happening: the soldiers went viral. Up until now, the military had very strict policies on sites such as YouTube or Facebook. No longer. The latest trend of music video-inspired mayhem is being created (quite creatively, by the way) by America’s few and proud. And they’re hamming it up in renditions of Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus for all the world to view, share and “Like”.

I have a wild theory. Call me crazy, but I find this new wave of humanized soldiers (“They’re just like us!”) to be a brilliant, if unintended, underground marketing scheme to recruit soldiers. These men are rocking boot camp and risking their lives–sure–but they’re also gaining worldwide exposure and having a blast, too. Signing up now seems a lot more “Animal House” than “Apocalypse Now”. And that’s a good thing for luring new soldiers to enlist in an uncertain time of turmoil in the middle east. Time will tell if recruitment numbers go up, but I think this is a fascinating trend worth following. In a time of war, it certainly won’t make the numbers go down. Not when there’s a new Gaga parody to be performed in the barracks, right? See for yourself:

Tags: facebook, Lady Gaga, U.S. Military, Viral Video, YouTube

This entry was posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Consumer Insight, social media, Trends, Word of Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.