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The conventional wisdom is that the key to success for any digital marketing campaign is finding the right social media influencers. That holds true whether you are promoting a product, a brand, or even a political candidate. So there’s typically a mad scramble at the start of every marketing campaign to find top influencers. Unfortunately, as brands are increasingly finding out, sometimes a social media campaign can fall apart, even with A-list influencers.
Can social media convince people to join the Army?
Case in point: the Army recently hired legendary entertainment icon Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to help get more recruits. Given that “The Rock” has hundreds of millions of social media followers across a variety of different platforms (including 400 million on Instagram alone!), this influencer marketing deal should have resulted in hundreds of millions of impressions, plenty of engagement, and potentially tens of thousands of new recruits.
But that’s not the way things worked out. As part of its $11 million marketing deal with the United Football League (UFL), where “The Rock” is one of the primary owners, the U.S. Army didn’t get a single new recruit. In fact, if anything, they saw a net loss. During the time of the social media promotion (March through June 2024), the U.S. Army actually saw a net loss of 38 enlistments. As a result, the U.S. Army is now looking to recoup nearly $6 million, or just over half the value of the deal. The other $5 million? Well, that’s a sunk cost.
The role of A-list influencers
What was particularly egregious was the lack of follow-through on the part of “The Rock.” Or, at least, the lack of follow-through on the part of his handlers. He was supposed to make a grand total of 5 social media posts touting the Army, but he made just two. And he made none after April, meaning that once the contract was signed in March, he basically ignored the deal. That, despite the fact that he was being paid $1 million for every post he made. Surely, that should have been a huge incentive to fire up the laptop or mobile phone and make a post once a month?
In all fairness, it’s not like the whole digital marketing campaign rested on the mighty shoulders of “The Rock.” The U.S. Army also plastered its branding all over the uniforms of the players in the football league, and received generous in-game mentions as well. The social media posts from “The Rock” were supposed to be the cherry on top. But since he was one of the faces of the league, it was important that he be behind the deal from the very start.
To some extent, you can fault the product being offered. If anything, this was a grand experiment to see if a few social media posts would be enough to convince people to join the Army. Obviously, they weren’t. Watching football games on the TV is probably a lot safer than enlisting and shipping off to Ukraine or the Middle East these days,
Be careful with your choice of influencers
Perhaps the one big takeaway lesson from this fiasco is the following: be careful with the influencers you choose for your digital marketing campaign. Your first instinct might be to go for the high-profile A-list influencers that everyone has heard of, seen in the movies, or recognize immediately. But you might get more bang for your buck by going with lesser known “B-list” or even “C-list” influencers.
At the very least, you need to choose people who care enough about your brand, product, or company to follow through on their social media commitments. If you’re going to be paying them the big bucks, you need to be certain that they are going to be 100% all-in for you.
