Is It This Way Everywhere?

Trey Smith

While I'm not the sports fanatic I was when I was younger, I still watch on TV parts of a game or two each week and I get all the leading sports stories by watching Sports Center on ESPN. On Sunday night, I watched the second half of Peyton Manning's return to pro football after more than one year away due to a neck injury.

This post is not about that game or any game, for that matter. It's about a few of the TV commercials featured throughout this game. The ones I'm talking about are the ads for the various branches of the US armed forces.

It has always struck me as odd that -- at least in the US -- the military advertises its work like an automobile company advertises its cars or a beer company advertises its beer. The military employs many of the same emotive hooks as any other advertiser. What is NEVER stated is that the chief purpose of soldiers is to kill other human beings.

It says a lot about the state of this nation when the armed forces feel the need to advertise in the first place. It's not like the military is a well-kept secret and the only way to get out the word that they are hiring is by running a plethora of ads during televised sporting events. I mean, you don't see school districts running TV ads that there are teacher openings or cities announcing that they are accepting applications for sanitation workers or police officers.

Since a lot of our regular readers hail from outside the US, I'd like to ask you a question. Does the military in your country run snazzy ads on TV during sporting events or at other times? Is this something peculiar to the US or does it happen everywhere these days?