In early 2020, the United States Air Force Recruiting Service (ARFS) released a new video entitled “U.S. Air Force Special Warfare: Calm and the Storm.” The minute long video resembled a trailer for a big budget Hollywood blockbuster, which featured a military convoy as comes under attack and is then supported by aircraft that help save the day. It was posted to a variety of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Production of the video began in the late summer of 2019, and the goal was to develop a commercial that was focused on special warfare recruitment.
“We were coming up with ideas to promote Special Warfare,” explained Travis Waid, a writer and creative director for GSD&M, an Austin, Texas-based advertising agency for the U.S. Air Force. “We were also assigned with creating a new experiential tour to promote Special Warfare and it hit us. Instead of creating two separate things, what if they supported each other?
To produce the short video still required a large team including a film production crew of 53 individuals, along with more than dozen people from AFRS, GSD&M and other Air Force members who represented various career fields. The actual production took place at Cannon Air Force Base (AFB), New Mexico – with filming requiring three days and involving Security Forces and Special Warfare Airmen, pilots, tactical wheeled vehicles, helicopters and airplanes from bases from across the country.
The production company even turned to Hollywood pros for the delivery of movie-ready small arms to fill-in for the Air Force’s training weapons.
“We couldn’t use the SF and SW Airmen’s weapons because they had red tips,” Waid said. “So, we relied on a prop house that we found in Los Angeles.
The final video shows Airmen in a gunfight with an enemy force outside of a wall compound, while an A-10C Thunderbolt II flies overhead at the climax. Two actual commercials were produced and sharing on AFRS’s social media platforms. One, titled “Calm and the Storm,” has exceeded 18 million views to date, while the other, titled “Join the Fight,” has been seen more than 17 million times.
Taking it on the Road
While the videos certainly were on target on social media, AFRS created two “experimental” recruiting exhibits as part of its “Activate: Special Warfare” that were central to its mobile tour that began this past April.
It provided a four-dimensional virtual reality, experience-on-wheels that built popularity of the Air Force Performance Lab, a 53-foot trailer that started touring in 2015, and which has appeared at more than 250 events a year including festivals and air shows. The trailer has previously included a virtual-reality flight simulator, provided ways to compete in against an avatar in pull-ups against, and even tested visitors’ dexterity, situational awareness, logic, reasoning, and physical strength by tracking their performance with radio-frequency identification wristbands.
The video had been longed planned for inclusion on the Performance Lab, but it was delayed due to the pandemic until April 2021. Since then the trailer has included a virtual reality (VR) version that plays much a like an immersive video game, where players are deployed into the firefight.
Game On
The U.S. military has long used video games as a recruiting tool, while more recently the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force have each embraced the so-called “esports,” where teams of military gamers can even compete in different events. While those teams show off the skills of the military gamers, those teams also help create awareness about the opportunities the services provide.
Now the VR experience brings the game to the masses, and lets individuals not only watch the Activate: Special Warfare video, but to experience it. This could also be far more realistic and immersing than past efforts such as the U.S. Army’s video game series – America’s Army, which was similar to the popular Call of Duty or Battlefield franchises.
Once inside the trailer, players don a vest and VR goggles, takes hold of a device that replicates a gun, and then enter a scenario as one of the Airmen in the beleaguered convoy from the commercial. With the special VR headsets and vests the players hear everything in surround sound, and they even sense impacts on their over garments. Designers also engineered booths to generate hot air bursts and wind effects synched with explosions and landing of a helicopter for a full four-dimensional experience. It is certainly more advanced than anything America’s Army has offered to date.
“Best game ever,” one woman was quoted as saying as she exited Activate.
Since its launch, people have reportedly flocked to Activate at venues such as NASCAR’s Fanzone outside Charlotte Motor Speedway, in Conway, North Carolina, Oct. 9-10.
“The VR game is a real-life version of the commercial video and what connects them really is the story of how SW operators are able to remain calm under extreme pressure while engaging the enemy, calling in air strikes and rescuing others,” Waid explained.
Sign Up
Activate: Special Warfare is set to be part of the AFRS’s mobile tours for at least the next five years, and already it has traveled to 23 events in 15 states, attracting more than 12,000 people lining up to “play.” Of course, for AFRS it is still about potential recruits.
“Of those who signed up, 5,282 opted in to learn more and 1,453 turned into actual leads, which are all great percentages,” said Maj. Jason Wyche, AFRS chief of national events branch, strategic marketing division. “Considering that the pandemic kept a lot of people home in 2021, those numbers are expected to increase as life begins to return to normal and more people come out.”
