‘The Few … The Proud … The Marines’. It’s often heralded as the most successful tagline in advertising of the past half-century but it could be retired as soon as next year according to recent reports. Even though the tagline has been added to the ‘Advertising Walk of Fame’ on Madison Avenue it has been catching heat because those iconic words do nothing to convey what the U.S. Marines actually do, and their never-ending fight to keep our country safe.
The tagline — which made its debut in 1977 and is widely considered one of the most successful ad campaigns of the 20th century — “does a great job distinguishing ourselves from the other branches and making us prestigious to recruits,” Lt. Col. John Caldwell, a spokesman for Marine Corps Recruiting Command, told Marine Corps Times, a newspaper serving Marines and their families.
“But it doesn’t say anything about what we do or why we exist,” Caldwell told the newspaper.
J. Walter Thompson, the agency that created the tagline, is already working on ideas for a new Marine recruiting campaign, which Recruiting Command expects to submit to senior Marine leaders late this year or early next year, Caldwell said.
“The new products are going to frame everything that we do as a fight — a fight that we intend to win,” he told Marine Corps Times.
This tagline has helped foster one of the most positive images imaginable for The Marines, so it’s hard to fathom something that will be equally as effective and memorable, but it’s something that we the public can expect to see rolled out in the very near future.
…Head on over to NBC News for more on this developing story…