Fighting for public health: The promotion of desirable bodies in interactive military marketing

Abstract

In 2016, the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) launched a digital Sports Club and began providing the public with fitness programmes and wellness advice. The SAF were now, in their words, ‘fighting for a healthier Sweden’. By taking ‘the Club’ as its point of departure, this article contributes to emerging literature on military public relations in general, and digital outreach in particular. It illustrates how interactive, digital technologies enable armed forces to position themselves as both visible and useful in the everyday lives of a diversity of citizens. This presence carries considerable potential for military institutions seeking to recruit and retain soldiers and supporters for war preparations and deployments. In addition, by showing how the Club renders the SAF appealing and accessible through gendered language and imagery, which partly challenges ideas of muscular, military masculinity, this article contributes knowledge about the ways in which armed forces are (re)gendered in military marketing.

Marketing in the Public Sector—Benefits and Barriers: A Bibliometric Study from 1931 to 2020

“…Cluster 2-public health was represented mainly by the following nodes: campaign (663 occurrences), health (408 occurrences), regulation (393 occurrences) and advertising (297 occurrences). Public health policies in the past decades (Burris 2008;Choi and Springston 2014;Evashwick and Ory 2003;Freeman et al 2016;Garrett et al 2019aGarrett et al , 2019bHa and Ferguson 2015;Lozano et al 2015;Mahmood et al 2019;Maynard 1986;Norén 2010;Strand 2019) were important for the promotion of behavioral and lifestyle changes, i.e., healthier lifestyle. One such action was the tobacco visual displays in product packages (Alemanno 2011) to reduce consumption among smokers and call for public awareness.…”

Militarizing antimilitarism? Exploring the gendered representation of military service in German recruitment videos on social media

“…Feminist research has highlighted the crucial role that understandings of manliness play in the justification of armed forces and the violence committed on behalf of the state (see, for example, Åhäll 2012;Belkin 2012;Enloe 2000Enloe , 2016Goldstein 2001;Hooper 2001;Hutchings 2008;Wibben 2018). A narrower strand of research has zoomed in on the role of masculinity in military recruitment and public relations (see, for example, Brown 2012;Enloe 2015;Jester 2021;Shim and Stengel 2017;Strand 2021).…”

“…In recent years, scholars of critical military studies have increasingly focused on military public relations and recruitment as a central site for the production and reproduction of the legitimacy of military forces and violence (Basham 2013;Crilley 2016;Strand and Berndtsson 2015). Feminist scholars have examined the important role that notions of masculinity play in both making military service attractive and legitimating the state and its armed forces (Belkin and Carver 2012;Brown 2012;Enloe 2015;Jester 2021;Strand 2021). Military service (in particular in combat) is often seen as the epitome of masculinity and the soldier as the ideal citizen (Belkin 2012;Cockburn 2010;Enloe 2016;Peterson 2010).…”

“…As in research on military masculinities more generally, studies of military marketing and recruitment have also recently turned their attention to complexity, ambiguity, and contradiction (Brown 2012;Jester 2021;Strand 2021;Strand and Berndtsson 2015;Strand and Kehl 2019). This is due, at least in part, to the AVF's need to broaden their recruitment pool, leading to more diverse and ambiguous recruitment messaging.…”

“…This is due, at least in part, to the AVF's need to broaden their recruitment pool, leading to more diverse and ambiguous recruitment messaging. Scholars have, for example, examined differences between branches of the United States military and the function of ambiguous and contradictory messaging, such as messaging that is less aggressive, more risk averse, and more diverse (Brown 2012;Strand 2021;Strand and Berndtsson 2015;Strand and Kehl 2019). Others have explored humor in the camouflaging of militarism and the delegitimation of criticism (Beck and Spencer 2021).…”