You go to war with the advertising slogan you have…

Lt. Vic Easel has once again kept his recruiter job, thanks to lower aptitude standards and kinder drill sargents.

But the Army will no longer use the “Army of One” slogan anymore. New marketing strategies for victory must be used to ensure that recruiters of freedom like Lt. Vic Easel meet their quotas of liberty. But what is this brave new slogan?

“Army Strong,” says Lt. Vic Easel, proudly.

“How much did the Army spend to come up with something that sounds like it came out of Frankenstein’s mouth?” I ask. “ARMY STRONG! RRRRRRRRR! FIRE BAD! RRRRR!”

“It’s a 5-year, one billion dollar contract,” says Lt. Vic Easel.

“Why didn’t you just pay Marvel Comics half that amount just to use the phrase ‘HULK SMASH’?” I say. “It would have the same effect, and you’d have money left over for stuff like body armor.”

“Because we’re the military, and we need to overpay for everything,” says Lt. vic Easel. “Because if we don’t, we get less money when the next budget is made.”

“For a billion dollars I could have come up with something better than ‘Army Strong,’” I say. “Like: ‘The US Army: Play Halo for real.’”

“We tried that,” says Lt. Vic Easel, shaking his head. “One fat kid kept asking where the respawn points were and I had to choke him out.”

“Or why not reference Pat Tillman?” I say. “Join the Army and we’ll tell everyone your death was more heroic than it actually was.”

“Congress earmarks 5 million dollars a year for us to make up better versions of how people died in the line of duty,” says Lt. Vic Easel. “Which we misappropriate to buy plasma screen TV’s for our briefing rooms.”

“Or how about ‘Join the Army, because if you’re a contractor you’ll never live long enough to collect your paycheck,’” I say. “That’ll keep people from bypassing the armed forced and going to Blackwater or some other mercenary outfit.”

“You need to shorten it to something more punchy,” says Lt. Vic Easel. “I wanted them to use ‘ARMY: FUCK YEAH!’ but then we’d have to pay the South Park guys and we didn’t want to do that.”

“Man, it’s trickier than I thought to come up with a marketing strategy for an organization where you’re likely to come home with limbs missing or shrapnel in your brain,” I say.

“God damn Air Force has it easy,” says Lt. vic Easel. “Their new slogan is ‘We’re home by sundown and we sleep in actual beds.’ Fuck, everyone wants that. What the hell can we say? Join us, we swear you’re not cannon fodder?”

Life is hard for the marketers of the Army.