Recruiting duty offer

The pattern

This still is filed under Recruiting duty offer.

Define

Join us, framed as who you become, not as a job listing.

Mechanism

Identity offer. The role is a self. Benefits are secondary to the person you will be after you say yes.

Verdict

We are recruiting into a hard, proud, or transforming role: service, craft, a company with a real culture.

Why it works

It leverages massive social proof and peer pressure by showing the actual names of volunteers, making the abstract idea of duty very personal and local.

The big idea

Thousands of New Yorkers signed up in a single week, and printing all their names makes each reader check whether his own is missing.

The offer

Enlist in the Army, National Guard, Navy, Marine Corps or Naval Reserve at the recruiting stations listed in the YOU CAN ENLIST HERE boxes.

The proof

The count of 2285 volunteers in one week, every name printed and grouped by service, plus photographs of recruits in the training camps.

Lines from the ad

2285 New Yorkers Volunteered In One Week.

Is Your Name On This List?

YOU CAN ENLIST HERE

Steal this when

You have strong, specific numbers and lists to demonstrate overwhelming local popularity or compliance.

The emotion

Written to Duty. It makes the Avoid mistake.

Printing all 2285 volunteers' names under 'Is Your Name On This List?' enforces the call by public comparison with neighbors, even though the enlistment boxes do name where to sign up.

Puts the problem on the reader