Teaching the USMC Public Affairs Command Owned Media Marketing

Eric Schwartzman

Eric Schwartzman is the principal consult at Schwartzman & Associates, a boutique public relations, SEO, and content marketing agency. He is also the author of 2 best selling books, an international keynote speaker, and a contributor at Adweek, Fast Company, TechCrunch, Yale Climate Connections, The Healdsburg Tribune, and many others.

I shot this video at the USMC Recruit Depot as part of a public affairs initiative I led at Parris Island during the Educator’s Workshop with two objectives in mind. This video is entirely candid and nothing was “staged” for the camera.

My first objective was to teach the Marine Corps public affairs command how to shoot, edit and upload all my video content to their website and YouTube.

My second objective was to create a compelling video that could be used to support their recruiting program.

This is an early case study of the use of owned media, in this case video owned by the Marine Corps, to extend the reach have an existing program to the web.

The Educator’s Workshop hosts Educators from high schools across the country, mostly counselors, so that they have an idea of how to respond to students who expressed interest in joining the Marine Corps.

We viewed the United States Marine Corps has final exercise, the culmination of boot camp training which is called The Crucible.

This is a case study showing the Marine Corps early use of online video and social media is part of an owned media initiative to help drive recruiting and expose a broader audience to the option of joining the Marines.

Whereas a commercial B2B enterprise might use qualified lead generation, growth marketing targets or revenue to measure the success of owned, shared and earned media initiatives, the Marine Corps looks at the ability to recruit qualified candidates as their KPI.

I shot and edited this video on site at their recruit depot in South Carolina as part of an exercise to help train the Marine Corps public affairs command on how to use online video for public affairs.

In addition to featuring this content on YouTube and embedding it on their own website, using my Homeland Embassy strategy, it is also possible to live stream on demand content these days as well.

I created similar videos for the United States Marine Corps during Marine Week Boston, which included this online influencer marketing program.