The Army is going retro with its new recruiting campaign, bringing back the now-famous slogan "Be all that you can be" which was later changed to the more controversial "Army of One" which carried the force through the early days of the War on Terror before transitioning again to "Army Strong" lampooned by many soldiers as "Army Wrong."
But those of us from a certain generation are likely to chuckle at bit at the return of the "Be all you can be" slogan making a return. My first thought is actually of the 1994 classic comedy "In the Army Now" starring Pauly Shore.
It was the kind of satire that could only exist in the early 1990s as the Cold War was over and some people genuinely were not sure why America had or needed a robust military. In the movie, Pauly Shore (playing Pfc. Bones Conway) and his buddy join the Army for the money, signing up to be water purification specialists, because what are the odds of them ever actually being deployed?
Of course, America ended up doing quite a bit of fighting in the desert which was the joke of the film.
Anyway, the Army says they are not bringing back "be all that you can be" simply for the sake of nostalgia, but because it performed the best during focus group testing of over 200 different tag lines. If it worked once before, it seems that it can work again.
The new "be all that you can be" campaign is set to launch in 2023.
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