Case Studies

What Can We Help You to Achieve?

Generate Leads

Generating qualified leads for the "sale" of a service or product is a specialized field of advertising. It requires a cost-efficient media strategy that reaches the masses – and creative that motivates the few.

Direct response advertising, databank management, lead fulfillment, sponsorships and promotions – these are all critical elements of major lead generation campaigns. For over ten years, we’ve been conducting innovative and successful campaigns on behalf of our clients – some of whom, like the National Guard, have had very challenging objectives to meet.

We invite you to read how we have met and continue to meet the challenge of generating military recruitment leads.

The National Guard

The Challenge: Generating qualified recruitment leads during the war on terror.

When the potential of combat duty in Afghanistan and Iraq became a reality for National Guard soldiers, the price of military service increased dramatically, and enlistments in the National Guard and every other branch of the military dropped across the board. From consistently meeting its recruitment goals to falling short of them, we knew the Guard had to re-position itself as the nation’s domestic emergency response providers and domestic protection force in order to fill its ranks of 350,000 soldiers.

The Result: National Guard recruitment "makes mission"

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, the National Guard played a key role in rescuing and restoring order. LM&O Advertising seized upon this dramatic event to emphasize what ONLY the Guard does – serve communities and neighbors in times of domestic crisis. We incorporated dramatic images of the Guard’s service and testimonials by its soldiers into the summer 2005 advertising campaign, which instantly resulted in goal-meeting recruitment responses. The Guard accomplished its monthly goals for six straight months following this repositioning.

How did we help our client to succeed?

As we had successfully and continuously done since 1996, we began by listening. Based on comprehensive feedback from recruiters nationwide, we realized that the Guard’s unique identity and missions were becoming lost to our target audiences in the polarizing debate on the war. Combat duty overshadowed all the benefits and value of service in the Guard in discussions with potential enlistees, their parents, guidance counselors and community leaders. Capitalizing on the availability of photos and first-person stories coming out of the hurricane devastation, we created a series of powerful print advertisements, television spots and direct mailings appealing to those qualified people drawn to civic duty, community service and emergency response activities.

The 54-state and territory television and radio campaign consisted of 91 individual ads featuring the "real stories" of National Guard soldiers. These compelling, personal testimonials ran as public service announcements of rural area TV networks around the country. The nature of the ads and their high quality production resulted in free airings in excess of twice the expected amount.

With the changing political and social environment, it was important to validate our beliefs about this millennial generation. LM&O conducted a national ethnography study of new soldiers during their National Guard drill weekends and at home, with their family and friends. Insights gathered through this research helped us choose more relevant media opportunities and fine-tune our messages to our 5 core segments.

As a result of the ethnography study and the feedback we receive from the over 20 million pieces of direct mail sent annually to high school juniors and seniors nationwide, we have continued to elevate response rates and generate qualified leads for the National Guard. Increased responses rates have been realized and capitalized on by modifying copy points, message and visuals to further increase responses.