How curious...US Military NASCAR sponsors, and no incredulous comments?

[RickRutledge]

NASCAR warm and fuzzies aside, what we need is a comprehensive Public Affairs/Marketing plan that we actually stick to. A few years back (07 I believe) the PA team at NHQ put together a strategic plan to move forward with a massive media campaign to gain some much needed exposure, on paper the plan looked great, but the follow through sucked.

Good, old fashioned organic media coverage will do wonders for both public awareness and recruiting. But we have to sell our strongest points: All Volunteer, Largely Self Supported organization that assists the Air Force and SAVES TAX PAYER DOLLARS! Internally, every wing and NHQ could do a better job to sell our mission capabilities to the customers -- in turn we'll gain more exposure by being a larger part of incidents. AND, a better PAO training program will make a huge difference because we can plan to plan, but if the follow through and execution is lacking, the results will be far less than expected. 

After 14 years in media and marketing that's just my two cents.

[RADIOMAN015]

NASCAR warm and fuzzies aside, what we need is a comprehensive Public Affairs/Marketing plan that we actually stick to. A few years back (07 I believe) the PA team at NHQ put together a strategic plan to move forward with a massive media campaign to gain some much needed exposure, on paper the plan looked great, but the follow through sucked.

Good, old fashioned organic media coverage will do wonders for both public awareness and recruiting. But we have to sell our strongest points: All Volunteer, Largely Self Supported organization that assists the Air Force and SAVES TAX PAYER DOLLARS! Internally, every wing and NHQ could do a better job to sell our mission capabilities to the customers -- in turn we'll gain more exposure by being a larger part of incidents. AND, a better PAO training program will make a huge difference because we can plan to plan, but if the follow through and execution is lacking, the results will be far less than expected. 

After 14 years in media and marketing that's just my two cents.

Excellent comments above -- make a strategic plan with operational sub plans, evaluate and adjust as the plan is implemented.  Yes in my public affairs role, I was unable to download the newest video to use on a personal computer at an amateur radio feast we were invited to attend,and had to resort to an order video.  I've come down to the conclusion that we don't need any gimmicks to recruit members (e.g. sponsored race cars) but just personal recruiting efforts with the National HQ website being the primary information source to include sorted news by each wing.  Websites tend to not get updated when the member doing it leaves and on one else knows who to do it.  Also I think the effectiveness of face book, twitter, and my space needs to be studied BEFORE more emphasis is placed on this media (and the same type of evaluation is now going on on some industries).   My understanding is one firm has to have 1 person dedicated almost full time to looking on comments on the face book page and editing/deleting if necessary -- We don't have the resources in our units to do this.

Also we shouldn't be making promises we can't keep whether it be flying for free or having an emergency mission every week that a member can participate in.   There's NO reason to recruit someone who will just leave a year later,this is very costly in time & materials to the organization.  On the senior member level ideally we should do target recruiting for the skills and personal attributes we need in the organization.  Cadet wise is much more difficult in retention, because teenagers are really in a come and try, experimental mode, and may find that the program just isn't  for them.

Public awareness is doing things for the community and showing what are training is all about and what are emergency capacities are (but also what they are note).

RM