Defense Advertising and Self-inflicted Injuries

Do no harm. It’s a cardinal rule for doctors – and it should be the same for advertisers because a poorly executed ad can do as much damage as a surgeon with a shaky hand.

Recently, when flipping through a defense magazine, I came across one of these misguided ads and was shocked by how badly it served the company that had purchased it.

The one-pager was for comms equipment, and it depicted your typical soldier as an operator. But on his camo cap, there was the word “infidel” written in Arabic-style script, a tweak to Islamic extremists.

Apparently, no one at the defense company or its agency (if there was one) had the good sense to Photoshop out the provocative word. Worse still, the hat might have been intentionally included.

While good ads support sales efforts, this one backfired in three major ways:

1)    It risked annoying the primary customer.

2)    It definitely alienated foreign Muslim customers.

3)    It introduced a distracting political message.

Now, unless you’ve been sleeping under rock, you would have noticed that, for the past few years, our government has been doing its best to avoid painting the Global War on Terror in religious tones.

That should be reason enough for defense contractors (and their supporting professional agencies) to avoid words like crusader, jihad, Shariah and infidel in product ads.   

Additionally, a great many Muslim and Muslim-majority countries (Turkey, Morocco, Oman, etc.) buy arms and other military equipment from the U.S. An ad like this shuts off those markets to a contractor.

Finally, the political message is a distraction. It doesn’t tell the readership – hopefully, a program manager – anything about the product or the company. Well, at least nothing positive.

Just some things to consider when planning your next ad in a trade publication...