While Senior Art Director at chemistri (now Arc World Wide), my concepts and strategy for the Army's new digital presence landed me the role of lead designer for the re-branded “AN ARMY OF ONE” goarmy.com site as well as creative lead for all online advertising from 2000-03.
· 2001 Cannes Bronze Cyber Lion
· One Show: Best of the Digital Decade Nominee
· One Show Interactive Silver Pencil
· Comm Arts Site of the Week
· Effie Award Winner
· Best and most efficient source of recruitment (75% increase in online leads)
· 40K Unique Users/Day Average (130% increase in site traffic)
The "Be All You Can Be" brand hadn't changed in 20 years, and had lost its relevancy to a new generation. It was my job to help develop the new brand’s expression in the digital space.
Strangely enough, the biggest impediment to joining the Army for the target market at the time was the unknown and fearing loss of identity. To the target market the Army was a black box that if they ventured into would make them a mindless automaton. This was a big misconception. So then, how about we clear it up? Put the Soldiers up front and center. Have them tell all of their stories. Prior to joining, through Basic Training, their day-to-day life, and the positive ways that the Army impacted their lives as well as how they have been able to be a positive influence on the lives' of others.
After establishing goarmy.com, I created specialized sites for more targeted missions, most notably—The Special Forces aka The Green Berets.
I led a team to help the Green Berets achieve their recruiting goals by creating a site that educated potential recruits, stood up to their high standards, and faithfully told of their legend. The site included faux video transmissions from the field, Easter egg military map symbols and terms, schematics of SF gear, and a breakdown of each member of an SF Alpha-detachment team.
The Army used the site as a model for all specialized sites going forward. More importantly to me though--the Green Beret's liked it and thought it accomplished the goal of accurately depicting who they are and what they do. HOOAH!
When the sites were done, it was time to start driving traffic via online media. Remember now, this is 2000-03, online video was not making it's way into online advertising yet and placements were of the 12-25K variety versus today's placements.
With this unavoidable technical constraint, I moved the Army in a direction that used this restriction to make an aesthetic choice. This approach emphasized style, employing a more retro 2-color look, with rotoscoped, vectorized animations.
It worked. The traffic came in droves (40K unique users/day). The ads performed (one had a 20% CTR!), and the approach netted me a One Show Interactive Silver Pencil.
In addition to designing the Army's websites, it was my responsibility to translate the brand to the digital space and create a set of standards for all of the Army's digital communications.
During that time, I also got the opportunity to go on location and direct a number of photo and video shoots. These ranged from one-on-one interviews with a Soldier to coordinating with a platoon-sized force for still shots.