Army Uses NASCAR in Recruiting Effort

The U.S. Army has been using NASCAR races, football games and rodeo events to maintain the all-volunteer force during the war in Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and to market it as an attractive career. After missing recruiting goals, the Army launched a program in 2000 to transform its image and its advertising spending went from $299 million in 1998 to $598 million in 2003.

FORT RILEY, Kan. (AP) – Joe Nemechek is “G.I. Joe” to many NASCAR fans, a nickname stemming from the GoArmy.com logo on the hood and bumper of his Chevy Monte Carlo.

Every lap he leads and every pole he wins puts the Army in millions of living rooms nationwide.

Sponsoring Nemechek is part of a military recruiting strategy, which includes advertising at football games and rodeos, aimed at maintaining the all-volunteer force during the war in Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

“We have to get the best young men and women in the Army to continue,” said Tom Tiernan, a 22-year Army veteran who is now a civilian employee leading the marketing program.

The program’s success is open to debate. A federal General Accounting Office report concluded last year that the military – even though its advertising spending rose from $299 million in 1998 to $598 million in 2003 – couldn’t truly evaluate such campaigns because “joining the military is a profound life decision.”

That was true for Pvt. Shannon Cooke, 19, of Newport News, Va., who joined the Army to follow a family tradition.

“My mother was in the Army; I always knew I wanted to come,” said Cooke, with Fort Riley’s…

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