[Task & Purpose] new and somewhat unnerving recruiting pitch from the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group asks viewers one simple question: "Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings?" The three-and-a-half minute, movie trailer-esque video was released by the 4th PSYOP Group on Youtube on May 2. Since then it’s brought in almost 250,000 views, and it’s not hard to see why: This is not your father’s recruiting commercial.
Complete with eerie whistling in the background and suspenseful music, the video is far from the sometimes-cheesy Army recruiting commercials we often see on television. It’s dark and palpably tense, the clips of old cartoons and radio segments from world events combining perfectly to create something that is both intriguing and unsettling.
It accomplishes exactly what psychological operations soldiers set out to do: Influence an audience. As one commenter on Youtube pointed out: "Everything is a weapon. Even this video."
Col. Chris Stangle, commander of 4th PSYOP Group, told Task & Purpose on Friday that the video was created in-house, both as a recruitment effort but also to literally show people what they can do — part of psychological operations is creating persuasive media. Stangle said that the artist behind the video tailored it a bit after iconic horror film JAWS, where the filmmakers showed restraint in actually showing the shark. Instead, viewers knew it was lurking just below the surface.
"Drawing on this approach, we kind of sought to create a piece that doesn’t show what a PSYOP soldier does necessarily, because it’s so complicated and there’s so much about it — quite honestly. It’s just not incredibly sexy — but what it feels like to do our craft when we’re successful," Stangle said. "And we think that kind of allows the audience to immerse into what our world is, and what our craft is."
