[Infowarrior] - The Army's looking for a few good online gamers

[Richard Forno]

The Army's looking for a few good online gamers

By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY Thu Apr 12, 6:52 AM ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070412/tc_usatoday/thearmyslookingforafew
goodonlinegamers

NEW YORK - The U.S. Army is about to invade the online gaming community with
an estimated $2 million sponsorship deal with the Global Gaming League
website.

Starting in June, the Army will sponsor a "national gaming" area as a way to
tap into the site's 9.2 million players per month of everything from shooter
games to pro baseball. It hopes to find candidates for recruitment among the
17- to 24-year-old males who are 80% of the gamers on the site - young men
hard to reach with advertising.

"The consumer model for traditional media is changing," says Gary Bishop,
who oversees Army marketing and advertising. "We're grappling with the
challenge of how do we better use new media to tell the Army story. Online
is probably the best way."

GGL is a gaming community site that blends game news and play. Founder Ted
Owen describes it as "ESPN meets MySpace for gamers. Video gaming is a
culture. The Army has been a very forward thinker. They get it."

It joins other advertisers who increasingly see gaming - sites and in-game
product placement - as a cost-effective medium. In-game ad revenue was
projected to reach $164 million in the USA last year and is expected to top
$732 million by 2009, according to consumer tech researcher The Yankee
Group.

Players in the national gaming area can compete for prizes and rankings in
15 games. They then can move into the top rung of competition with the
service's America's Army video game, introduced in 2002. Top players will
face off in a monthly Elite Forces tournament. Besides winning video games,
top players may win a chance to try out the Army's sophisticated computer
simulations of real combat situations.

"We're taking the idea of military gaming and having the Army leverage an
existing environment to find potential candidates for recruits," says Reuben
Hendell, CEO of MRM Worldwide, the agency that will create the specialized
games section.

Players can opt-in to receive Army information when they register for the
games. "Once their hand is raised, we'll pursue it," says Anders Ekman, an
executive vice president with MRM. "There's a pretty hefty (goal for leads)
associated with this."

While the Army has met its monthly recruitment goals through traditional
media during the
Iraq war, Bishop says the gaming deal presents an opportunity "to tell the
Army story. It's not all about combat. Being in the Army is about driving
trucks, welding, nurses and computers. If we have an opportunity to tell the
Army story, we may have better influence."