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By Fonda Bock Associate Editor
28 | recruiter journal | may-june 2013
n a mission to gather stock photos and video to be used in future public relations and marketing ventures for Recruiting Command, USAREC’s marketing chief Steve Lambert spent three days in mid April selectively snapping photos of members of an Army Reserve Combat Support Hospital (CSH) training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He’d spent the week before shooting video and still footage in Puerto Rico interviewing members of an Army Reserve engineering company and filming footage of their participation in multiple community building projects. The stock photos Lambert gathered at the Mayo Clinic will be used to produce print ads in support of the Medical Recruiting Brigade (MRB) recruiting effort. Photos will also be used on websites and in advertorials, brochures, fact sheets and flyers. The footage shot in Puerto Rico will be used to produce a public service announcement showing how Army Reserve members give back to the Puerto Rican communities in which they live. The goal is to educate Puerto Ricans about the Army Reserve and help establish brand identity in Puerto Rico. Designed to reach the masses, the public service announcement will be run in movie theaters throughout summer. These marketing products are important, said Ward Wood, USAREC’s director of Marketing, Education and Outreach, because the command is projected to miss this year’s Reserve mission and have continued challenges in the coming years. “Since this is a priority mission for the command, we’re trying to do all we can to boost up our Reserve marketing material so we can farm it out to all the units or digitize it so it can be dispersed electronically,” said Wood. MRB commander Col. Karrie Fristoe and Martin Stubeda, USAREC’s director of health services, worked with the commanders of Army Reserve Medical Readiness and Training Command and the CHS to coordinate the photo shoot. “I always look for opportunities to highlight good news stories and gather stock photos to be used in future MRB marketing ventures,” said Stubeda. The Puerto Rico PSA will be designed to help establish brand identity of the Army Reserve, said Lambert. “A brand equity analysis found people on the island don’t see the distinction between the Army Reserve, active duty and the National Guard,” said Lambert. “They think anyone who joins the Army goes straight to Iraq, and they also don’t realize that in Puerto Rico, most of the time it’s the Reserve that helps communities deal with disasters, not the National Guard.” These are just two of a number of in-house marketing products USAREC has produced during the past nine months. With the draw down on the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and the